As data centers boom, English village becomes a battleground

ABBOTS LANGLEY

Originally built to store crops from peasant farmers, the Tithe Barn on the edge of the English village of Abbots Langley was converted into homes that preserve its centuries of history.

Now, its residents are fighting to stop a development next door that represents the future.

A proposal to build a data center on a field across the road was rejected by local authorities amid fierce opposition from villagers.

But it's getting a second chance from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government, which is pursuing reforms to boost economic growth following his Labour party's election victory in July.

Residents of Abbots Langley, 30 kilometers northwest of London, worry the facility will strain local resources and create noise and traffic that damages the character of the quiet village, which is home to just over 20,000 people.

Off the main street there's a church with a stone tower built in the 12th century and, further down the road, a picturesque circular courtyard of rustic thatched-roof cottages that used to be a farm modeled on one built for French Queen Marie Antoinette.

“It’s just hideously inappropriate,” said Stewart Lewis, 70, who lives in one of the converted houses in the 600-year-old Tithe Barn. “I think any reasonable person anywhere would say, ‘Hang on, they want a data center? This isn’t the place for it.'”

As the artificial intelligence boom fuels demand for cloud-based computing from server farms around the world, such projects are pitting business considerations, national priorities and local interests against each other.

The land for the Abbots Langley data center is currently used to graze horses. It's bordered on two other sides by a cluster of affordable housing and a highway.

One of the biggest concerns about data centers is their environmental impact, especially the huge amounts of electricity they need.

James Felstead, director of a renewable energy company and Lewis’ neighbor, said the area’s power grid wouldn’t be able to handle so much extra demand.

It's a problem reflected across Europe, where data center power demand is expected to triple by the end of the decade.

While the AI-fueled data boom has prompted Google, Amazon and Microsoft to look to nuclear power as a source of clean energy, worries about their ecological footprint have already sparked tensions over data centers elsewhere.

Google was forced to halt plans in September for a $200 million data center in Chile’s capital, Santiago, after community complaints about its potential water and energy usage.

In Ireland, where many Silicon Valley companies have European headquarters, the grid operator has temporarily halted new data centers around Dublin until 2028 over worries they’re guzzling too much electricity.

Other places like Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore have imposed various restrictions on data centers.