Data center sparks battle on London’s Brick Lane

While data centers need space if Britain is serious about AI sovereignty, environmental advocates say that city planners have used the issue as ‘a kind of Trojan horse for bad development’

• By Alexandra Bacon / AFP, LONDON

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In Brick Lane, the historic heart of London’s Bangladeshi community, residents oppose plans for a data center in a disused brewery, citing the erosion of heritage and need for social housing.

“This has really been the focal point of the British Bangladeshi community,” local councilor Faysal Ahmed told reporters, recalling a time when his parents ran a restaurant beneath his childhood home in the lane.

While many curry houses remain, the street and the surrounding neighborhood is transforming, in part to help power the British capital’s digital infrastructure boom.

People hold placards protesting the approval of a data center on Brick Lane in London on Sept. 4.

Photo: AFP

Part of a multimillion-pound redevelopment of the sprawling former Truman brewery site, the East End financial data center is an unlikely addition to the graffiti-lined Brick Lane, where tourists spill between vintage shops and line up for bagels served through the night.

The 7.5 hectare site would also be transformed by new offices and retail space, primarily serving the neighboring financial district filled with skyscrapers.

Approval of the development by the British government comes as a boom in water and energy-hungry data centers — particularly as demand rises for facilities supporting artificial intelligence — fuels local opposition worldwide.

For Ahmed, the development uses land that could help house some of the roughly 31,000 residents on the waiting list for social housing in the Tower Hamlets district.

The redevelopment plans are for only 44 apartments, including just six for social housing, prompting residents to recently protest outside the British Ministry of Housing.

“My personal concern is about the need for affordable social housing for young people and preserving the heritage, the special character, of the area,” said Susanna Kow, a member of the Save Brick Lane campaign.

According to planning documents, the Labour government gave “significant weight” to the benefits of additional data center capacity, citing the need to “meet the escalating demand driving emerging technologies such as [artificial intelligence] AI and increased digital services.”

The government’s housing department declined to comment on its decision in last month to approve the plans, while the Truman Brewery has not responded to a request for its reaction.

“We’ve been campaigning on planning issues and ... the incursion of the city on the East End for quite a number of years,” said Jonathan Moberly, who is leading local opposition.

Moberly said that the project was part of a “growing national issue about the amount of power taken from the grid that can stop other developments happening, like housing.”

The International Energy Agency in April reported that the global electricity demand of data centers grew by 17 percent last year.

It projects electricity consumption from centers will double over five years to 2030.

“The UK already faces a projected daily water deficit of nearly 5 billion liters by 2050,” according to a report on the UK government Web site. “National water resource plans ... do not adequately account for the burgeoning demand from infrastructure such as AI data centers. This oversight risks intensifying water stress in already vulnerable regions.”

For industry consultant Mark Acton, the infrastructure is increasingly essential, particularly in London, a city where proximity can provide the ultra-fast response times needed for financial trading.

“Everything we currently do digitally comes from a data center,” said Acton, who argued the facilities have become an easy target owing to what he said was a lack of understanding of their actual water and energy use.

If Britain is serious about sovereignty over its AI infrastructure, “you’ve got to have somewhere to put it,” Acton said.

However, campaigners at environmental charity Global Action Plan argue that UK planning rules have not kept pace with the expansion of the sector or adequately accounted for environmental costs.

“It’s been a kind of Trojan horse for bad development,” said Owen Espley, the group’s community campaigns manager. “We need local knowledge and input to go into shaping developments to improve them and make sure that we get better data centers at the end of it.”

Further down Brick Lane, Carol Burns, born and raised in the area, has no intention of going anywhere. Sitting inside the shop her family has run since the 1800s — its walls covered with family photographs — Burns is proud to be part of London’s East End community.

“People are always trying to buy this place, but no. They’ll have to drag me out of here feet-first,” she said in her thick Cockney accent.