Emissions from power-hungry warehouses at Lincolnshire facility expected to be 850,000 tonnes a year
A vast new datacentre to feed Britain’s rising demand for artificial intelligence could cause more greenhouse gas emissions than five international airports.
Elsham datacentre in Lincolnshire is on course to cost £10bn and its 15 power-hungry computer warehouses are projected to release five times the carbon dioxide of Birmingham airport, including from take-offs and landings. A planning application for the facility nine miles east of Scunthorpe was submitted last month and a public consultation closes in three weeks.
Documents estimate the datacentre would consume 3.7bn kWh of energy, with annual CO2 emissions of 857,254 tonnes when running at full tilt. This is based on the current mix of energy sources powering the National Grid.
The datacentre will also create so much excess heat that glasshouses are being proposed with capacity to produce more than 10 tonnes of tomatoes a day.
/snip/
Datacentres are needed to train AI models and run AI searches, which are now routinely offered to billions of people by Google and Meta and which require four to five times more computing power, according to estimates.
So nothing that we don't already know, really, apart from the scale of it... And as for
Climate experts believe AI could help the fight against global heating by making power grids work more efficiently or accelerating the development of new zero-carbon technologies.
do they really think that would be enough to undo the damage already caused and ongoing?
I saw on another forum that there are some absolute rubbish AI replies - and that as these go into the "knowledge" that is being mined there is likely to be a downward spiral of competence.
They recommended the combination of Firefox and DuckDuck Go to avoid AI results, which by good luck is what I'm using!
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30 solar thermal tubes, 2MWh pa in Stockport, plus Congleton and Kinlochbervie Hydros,
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Emissions from power-hungry warehouses at Lincolnshire facility expected to be 850,000 tonnes a year
A vast new datacentre to feed Britain’s rising demand for artificial intelligence could cause more greenhouse gas emissions than five international airports.
Elsham datacentre in Lincolnshire is on course to cost £10bn and its 15 power-hungry computer warehouses are projected to release five times the carbon dioxide of Birmingham airport, including from take-offs and landings. A planning application for the facility nine miles east of Scunthorpe was submitted last month and a public consultation closes in three weeks.
Documents estimate the datacentre would consume 3.7bn kWh of energy, with annual CO2 emissions of 857,254 tonnes when running at full tilt. This is based on the current mix of energy sources powering the National Grid.
The datacentre will also create so much excess heat that glasshouses are being proposed with capacity to produce more than 10 tonnes of tomatoes a day.
/snip/
Datacentres are needed to train AI models and run AI searches, which are now routinely offered to billions of people by Google and Meta and which require four to five times more computing power, according to estimates.
So nothing that we don't already know, really, apart from the scale of it... And as for
Climate experts believe AI could help the fight against global heating by making power grids work more efficiently or accelerating the development of new zero-carbon technologies.
do they really think that would be enough to undo the damage already caused and ongoing?
I saw on another forum that there are some absolute rubbish AI replies - and that as these go into the "knowledge" that is being mined there is likely to be a downward spiral of competence.
They recommended the combination of Firefox and DuckDuck Go to avoid AI results, which by good luck is what I'm using!
Am I right in thinking that means about 400MW continuous load?
How much, if any, PV will they have on the roof?
The thing is that we need to ensure we don't fall behind on the AI and absolutely have to have our own national systems.
So whilst the energy draw is massive - we need to look at ways to mitigate this as far as possible rather than say we cannot do these AI centres till we can do it with green energy.
Being able to divert the waste into growing food is a good idea too. Minimise energy losses.
Both this waste of energy and the waste of energy that is crypto currency are unsustainable.
However these are two different problems in the sense that the waste with crypto is intrinsic. The cost of power to "mine" is what is ultimately the determining factor. The waste with AI is because we don't know how to do it using less power. We know in theory that MUST be possible since our biological neural net is running on less than 100 watts. And we don't take millions of iterations to learn something In otrer words, in the case of AI, a breakthrough in how neural nets are done is possible. Remember, currently we are EMULATING the neural net using software running on big/fast machines. Direct implementation of nodes (or node layers) in silicon might use orders of magnitude less power.
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 2:51 pm
Both this waste of energy and the waste of energy that is crypto currency are unsustainable.
However these are two different problems in the sense that the waste with crypto is intrinsic. The cost of power to "mine" is what is ultimately the determining factor. The waste with AI is because we don't know how to do it using less power. We know in theory that MUST be possible since our biological neural net is running on less than 100 watts. And we don't take millions of iterations to learn something In otrer words, in the case of AI, a breakthrough in how neural nets are done is possible. Remember, currently we are EMULATING the neural net using software running on big/fast machines. Direct implementation of nodes (or node layers) in silicon might use orders of magnitude less power.
The problem is that if this datacentre is denied permission, it'll still be built, just somewhere with a much dirtier grid than the UK.
12x 340W JA Solar panels (4.08kWp)
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6x 2.4kWh Pylontech batteries (14.4kWh)
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(Artist formally known as ******, well it should be obvious enough to those for whom such things are important.)
Back in Jan this year I received some news from one of my investments, Tritax Big Box, they normally build logistics warehouses but is now going to build a data centre near Heathrow. Its going to be 107MW with a possible expansion to 147MW.
They have also "acquired a 50% interest in a joint venture with an unnamed "leading" European renewable and low carbon energy power generator, to accelerate the development of power delivery at the Manor Farm site. This provides accelerated access to power in this prime data centre location, where a lack of power has significantly restricted the development of these nationally critical infrastructure projects."
The article also goes on to talk about a pipeline of further data centre opportunities up to 1GW.
Stinsy wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 2:59 pm
The problem is that if this datacentre is denied permission, it'll still be built, just somewhere with a much dirtier grid than the UK.
I don't think the current UK strategy will allow this investment or the facility to be put outside of the UK.
People are mixing up the superfluous AI (the bulk of which is just so people can be lazy) with the really useful applications that the AI can be used for - one of which is defence but within the real world and online.
Ultimately the key will be speed and without AI you are just not in the game and it really is something that we cannot afford to not do in the current global climate (which is also why we cannot have this outside of our country).
Obviously just my opinion and I am not an AI fan in most guises but it will become very important for some aspects of our lives (even if we don't see or realise it)
The Guardian's source is the the Energy and Sustainability Statement submitted in support of the planning application.
For some reason it has used a Grid Electricity CO2 Coefficient of 0.233 kg/kwh which is matches Defra's 2020 GHG Conversion Factor. In their 2024 report this had reduced to 0.207 kg/kwh. Their 2025 report due this week will probably be even lower.
The Government's Clean Power 2030 strategy expects grid emissions to be less than 0.050 kg/kwh in 2030.
So by the time this datacentre would be operational, the emissions would be far lower quoted in the ESS.
Furthermore large projects like this usually secure power through virtual PPAs so this would be a good offtaker for one of the many 1+GW offshore wind farms we're developing.
Countrypaul wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 1:39 pm
Am I right in thinking that means about 400MW continuous load? How much, if any, PV will they have on the roof?
none, because they say
The developer has ruled out on-site renewables as impractical. If the system ran on biomass energy it would require the daily delivery of 100 large lorry loads of wood chips. Wind energy would require 10,000 20-metre wind turbines, while an area five times the size of the Glastonbury festival site would be needed if it were to be powered by photovoltaic panels.
2.0 kW/4.62 MWh pa in Ripples, 4.5 kWp W-facing pv, 9.5 kWh Givenergy batt
30 solar thermal tubes, 2MWh pa in Stockport, plus Congleton and Kinlochbervie Hydros,
Veg, fruit - and Bees!
