UK’s Green Party demands data center ‘pause’

LONDON — The Green Party’s Zack Polanski has called on the U.K. government to hit “” on the construction of data centers to reflect on the environmental and societal impacts of the facilities behind the AI boom.

The intervention by Polanski, who has positioned himself as a progressive firebrand to the left of the governing Labour Party, is a sign that a fierce political battle over data centers playing out across the U.S. could soon make its way to the U.K.

Polanski on Friday stopped short of calling for a full moratorium, but argued that the Labour government has recklessly sought to attract energy and water-intensive data centers to the U.K. without sufficient safeguards or transparency about how local communities would benefit.