Bikers and Bug-Lovers Join Forces to Fight a New Google Data Center

Robins works for wildlife conservation trust Buglife, part of an unlikely alliance of special-interest groups trying to block the Thurrock development. Buglife and local wildlife groups fear for an endangered plant, rare bumblebee, and other invertebrates whose habitat they say will be destroyed. Nonprofit Foxglove says the data center will emit too much pollution. The Thurrock Hammers motorcycle club wants to return to racing on the site.

Members of the various groups joined Robins outside Google’s office last Wednesday, holding placards demanding the company “search elsewhere” for somewhere to put its facility.

Across the UK, companies like Google are preparing to build industrial-scale data centers, part of a scramble to meet the swelling demand for the compute needed to run artificial intelligence models and other digital services.