https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/28/labour-green-party-zack-polanski-ai-datacentres
Government says Green leader’s proposed moratorium on ‘energy-guzzling’ AI projects would be disaster for economy
Labour has rejected calls to pause construction of major AI infrastructure in Britain after the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, said it was time to “slam the brakes on these energy-guzzling, water-guzzling datacentres”.
The government hit back at the opposition party’s proposal of a “moratorium other than [for] local-scale datacentres for the local community”, saying it “would be a disaster for jobs and national security”.
The Greens’ call for a pause comes amid one of the UK’s worst droughts in years and predictions that datacentres’ electricity use, now standing at about 2.5% of the UK’s supply, will rise fourfold by 2030.
Datacentres contain the processing chips that power billions of AI prompts every day and Labour has designated them as critical national infrastructure, a decision Polanski called “outrageous”. “To most people critical infrastructure means hospitals, water, electricity,” he said. “It doesn’t mean artificial intelligence.”
He added: “Right now the government is putting our communities, our water security and our climate ambitions second to the demands of tech giants.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/28/labour-green-party-zack-polanski-ai-datacentres
