News · 10 May 2026
Google understated carbon figures for UK data centres
Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash
Planned new data centres will affect the UK's carbon budget more significantly than initial reports suggested. Developers for Google significantly misstated carbon contributions for two planned AI data centres in Essex, and Greystoke made similar errors for its Lincolnshire project. These calculations understated the significance of emissions by a factor of five, as found by Foxglove.
Reported by The Guardian · How we write briefs