Fears Grow Over New Data Centre's Impact

Dozens attended a public exhibition on plans to demolish three office blocks at Thames Valley Park in Earley and build a data centre on the site currently occupied by Microsoft. Developers say the scheme is being led by landowner FH Trustees, not Microsoft, and its unclear whether it would be for data storage or to boost AI capacity.

Protesters and politicians turned up with placards and concerns about heat, wildlife and jobs - notes read "be louder Microsoft can’t hear" and "data centres like this have devastating health and environmental impacts."

Micah Campbell-Webb, one of the protesters, said: "It’s so open-ended and nobody has any idea what’s going on, it poses the environmental risk of also facilitating AI, as well as the intellectual risk of people becoming dependent on AI permanently, which is something that especially school students at the minute are currently facing.

"The workplace is also filled with AI, which is causing a bunch of redundancies.

"They say we’ll open it up for 115 workers permanently; we’re saying, well, 115 isn’t enough, because the things that data centres are doing are causing so many redundancies, and harming employment when it’s already an employment crisis in the UK, that it’s just so detrimental to society as well as the environment as a whole."

Research cited at the event warned data centres can create local heat islands - one study suggested nearby temperatures could rise by 2-9C.

Varinder Anand, the BAME officer of Earley and Woodley Labour, said: "It’s pretty comforting the way they are going to take care of the environmental challenges, and they said the generator will be only for backup, so otherwise they are going to use the biofuel, so that was a sort of a relief.

"Because if it was a continuous use of generators, then it causes sort of noise pollution."

Local residents worried about wildlife and green space. Shubhendra Dudas said: "The forest is a nice place, I hear the birds singing in the morning and evenings, and I like to go there to relax.

"I cannot basically do anything in that forest because it’s protected by the council."

Roux Davies raised concerns about the impact on the electricity grid and housebuilding. He said: "Reading council has a housebuilding target of 800 homes a year, included in that are energy-efficientgreen homes andaffordable council homes.

"In 2023, they had issues building 50 affordable homes because of the lack of capacity on the electricity grid.

"Because they couldn’t have the capacity on the grid to have green infrastructure like heat pumps, they instead installed gas heating.

"The data centre is going to put such a strain on the grid, even over a decade, that it is going to take away from the council’s ability to build those green homes because it’s going to lead to further delays in infrastructure improvements on the grid and to having more homes."

The Green Party attended the consultation. Cllr Doug Cresswell said: "I’m not convinced that Wokingham needs a large additional source of heat, I think summer days like this will feel a lot hotter for people in the local area if the data centre gets ahead."

His daughter Pip added: "We’ve just had the hottest May in recorded history.

The temperatures we’ve been having were predicted for 2050, so we’re reaching high temperatures much faster because of proposals like this."

Supporters argue Thames Valley Park is a suitable greyfield site, but councillors and residents say consultations will generate many comments about access, grid capacity and water-cooling.

James Aldridge, Local Democracy Reporter