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Data centres and heatwaves: a climate blight in the public eye

A growing pushback on the controversial developments may hold the key to changing climate attitudes

Jeevan Vasagar, The Observer, Thursday 10 September 2026

An immediate threat to lives and livelihoods can be a catalyst for change. A YouGov poll in late June found a majority of British people linked the exceptionally hot weather this summer to climate change. So far, so unsurprising.

But the same polling also showed that attitudes to climate change have hardly budged, despite the heatwaves. The share of the population that is worried about climate change, around two-thirds, has remained constant since September 2021.

What does it take to induce a dramatic shift in attitudes? The answer to that question appears to be: data centres.

This is most obvious in the US, where a statewide moratorium was announced in New York, followed by a pause in Texas, pending an audit that will cover power use, water use, and impacts on local communities. But there’s a growing pushback in Britain too, from Fife to Brick Lane.

The opposition combines concerns about emissions, lack of local benefit and sheer size. A proposed data centre at Auchtertool, a village near Kirkcaldy in Scotland, would cover an area the size of 100 football pitches. The hyperscale data centres currently going through the planning system would require “colossal” amounts of electricity, according to the campaign group Foxglove. Water UK, the water industry’s trade body, says data centres currently use around 6.6m litres of water a day, but by the end of this decade the government’s ambition to triple data centre capacity means this figure could rise to around 20m litres a day. That’s quite a thirst…………………………………………………………….
https://observer.co.uk/news/climate/article/data-centres-and-heatwaves-a-climate-blight-in-the-public-eye

September 13, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change