Datacentre Boom: Welsh City Fights Back Against Tech Giants

You step into Dale Johnston’s garden in Newport, and the view is gone. The perfect autumn sky he should be enjoying is blotted out by a 23-meter-high grey wall of panels. This is a hyperscale datacentre. The local politicians call it a job creator. Johnston, a former chemical plant worker, calls it a disaster. He worries about the constant drone from 36 air coolers and the harmful fumes from 60 backup diesel generators. He already keeps his bathroom window shut against the hum from another facility. His wife, a nurse on night shifts, can barely sleep. “We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says.

Johnston has invited the councilors and MPs who backed this development to come see it for themselves. They won’t. His story is the frontline of a new kind of conflict. It pits residents against a global datacentre boom driven by the immense computing needs of artificial intelligence. In the UK alone, 315 hyperscale facilities are waiting to connect to the national grid. Their combined power demand is a staggering 73 gigawatts. That is 28 gigawatts higher than the typical peak energy demand on the coldest winter day.

This boom is not just happening in tech hubs. Wales is now a major hotspot. It already has the largest datacentre capacity outside London. The previous Labour government saw this as an inevitable revolution, creating five AI growth zones to fast-track these projects. The new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has signaled little will change, rejecting calls for a pause. But from villages to cities, people are pushing back. They see a resource-hungry industry offering little tangible benefit to their communities. They feel it is being imposed upon them.

The backlash in the United States is already fierce. Greg Pirio lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, known as Data Center Alley. A gas-powered datacentre opened 150 meters from his home last year. “This neighbourhood was calm and peaceful, and it’s turned into this nightmare,” he says. The noise from eight gas turbines is like a constant airport roar. It gives his neighbours headaches and keeps children awake. Pirio himself has developed health problems, including chest tightness. “I know whenever the diesel generators are on, because I feel it in my lungs,” he explains. More than 500 US counties have now passed datacentre bans.

In the UK, opposition is gathering force. In east London, residents are campaigning against a new datacentre on Brick Lane. Owen Espley of Global Action Plan is helping scores of local groups organize. “This summer has been wild. Every other week a new group has popped up,” he says. Petitions gain thousands of signatures in days. Espley sees a grassroots movement connecting communities from Brick Lane to Northumberland. They are all questioning the assumption that market-led expansion by US tech giants is the only path forward. “We need industrial strategy to deliver our own public computer,” he argues.

Nowhere is this tension more acute than on the eastern edge of Cardiff. An early morning sun warms a weedy car park. This is a vital park-and-ride for NHS staff heading to Wales’ largest hospital. Hundreds use it daily. Cardiff Council wants to sell this land to a developer named Curtis Hall to build a hyperscale datacentre. That facility would use over 150 megawatts of electricity annually. That is more than triple the power demand of a city the size of Cardiff itself.

The plan has sparked one of Wales’ most controversial planning battles. Council meetings have been disrupted. Over 1,200 formal objections were lodged. Sue Elias, a retired librarian, is here at the crack of dawn every Wednesday, reattaching her “Ditch the Datacentre” banner. She collects signatures from hospital staff who depend on the service. “What is going to happen to all the people who use the park and ride? It’s bonkers,” she says. She has never done anything like this before, but she has become a natural campaigner. Her union, Acorn, has staged protests, even bursting into a council planning meeting when emails and petitions went unanswered.

The human cost becomes even clearer across the river. Nick Richards, a filmmaker, moved into a brand-new housing estate with his wife last November. They were thrilled by the community and a new skate park nearby. They had no idea the council was planning a datacentre just 300 meters away. The plans include seven giant gas turbines to power the facility for up to five years. Richards now fears he will never be able to sell his home. “I feel trapped,” he says, pacing his kitchen. “I couldn’t look prospective buyers in the eye and not say there’s going to be seven gas turbines right next to them.”

He has studied the planning documents. He knows the emissions will include nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter, and formaldehyde. A care home sits just 150 meters from the proposed turbine site. “All these toxins cause health conditions, such as asthma, COPD and heart disease,” Richards states. The developer’s air quality assessments claim emissions will be within safe limits. Curtis Hall states the project cannot proceed without full regulatory compliance. But Richards does not want his community to be a test case. “The people building this centre don’t live here,” he says. “They don’t give two shits about Welsh people.”

This raw local anger initially surprised local Labour councillor Lee Bridgeman. He represents Llanrumney, one of Cardiff’s poorest areas, and had spoken in support of the development. He argued the planning process in the UK is far stricter than in the US and dismissed fears about rising bills or drained reservoirs as “scaremongering.” He believed the datacentre, while employing only about 125 people directly, could attract other big companies and create a knock-on effect of thousands of jobs.

Then he attended a public meeting at the local boxing club. It was standing room only. When he repeated his claim that few local residents had complained, the room erupted. People shouted that they didn’t know how to contact him. They asked if he had seen the social media campaigns. A show of hands revealed nearly everyone in the packed room was from Llanrumney, and almost all were opposed. Roughly three weeks later, Councillor Bridgeman performed a complete reversal. He submitted a formal letter of objection, citing the overwhelming feedback from his constituents.

This political pressure is now reaching the national level. The new Plaid Cymru-led government in Wales has intervened, ordering Cardiff Council to pause its application. Plaid Cymru’s Nick Carter, who has a background in commercial property, is deeply skeptical. He questions who truly benefits. “The developer has no track record in datacentres,” he notes. “They could be a front for someone else: Google, Microsoft, whoever. I can understand why these operators need datacentres, but I’m not sure members of the public share the need.”

Carter welcomes the government’s intervention and says Wales is developing a national datacentre strategy. But a fundamental contradiction remains. How can Wales meet its ambitious goal of net zero by 2040 while permitting energy-guzzling datacentres to proliferate? Carter admits, “It’s massively problematic.” In Westminster, the government’s answer is to promise unprecedented amounts of new clean power generation.

Back in Newport, a soft dusk falls. The sleek grey walls of the Vantage datacentre cast long shadows over homes. For some residents, the initial anger has faded into weary resignation. Some talk of moving. Others are somewhat mollified by meetings with the operator. But their troubles may be just beginning. Only one of three planned facilities on the campus is operational. Microsoft will open another soon. When fully running, there could be over 500 air handling units humming at once, with diesel generators constantly on standby.

The council’s own chief scientific officer warned during planning that fumes from all the generators had the “potential to cause unacceptable air pollution levels.” The council says it does not directly monitor generator emissions but checks air quality plans. Vantage states it operates within all controls and will monitor impacts.

For Dale Johnston, the democratic process has already failed. He fought the plans and felt ignored. Electoral roll cards still come through his door, but he will not be using them. “I’m voting for none of them,” he says. “I can’t trust them. They don’t care about any of us.”

Across the road, retired teacher Sonia Thomas looks out from the cottage she has lived in since 1969. She remembers orchards and fields. Now, all she sees is grey. “From inside you see grey, not blue,” she says, glancing at the datacentre filling her sky. “It’s horrible.” The view is gone, and with it, perhaps, something fundamental about what a community deserves from its future.

• Constant drone from air coolers
• Harmful fumes from diesel generators
• Local political pushback
• Health concerns from emissions
• Grassroots movements against datacentres
• Affected community members speaking out