About this Event
The UK has become Europe’s main hub for digital infrastructure. The Slough and west London corridor data centre hub, for example, is one of the largest in the world. In response to demand, and due to anxieties over AI sovereignty, the government has streamlined the planning process for data centres. They have been designated as critical national infrastructure, therefore overriding local council and community objections. All the while, the speed and scale of growth is placing significant strain on energy and water resources, communities and the environment.
Across the country, people are demonstrating against the AI server factories in their local areas. Grid capacity is limited, water is scarce with many areas still in drought, and there is insufficient transparency around the uses for data centres and the health, heat and noise risks they pose to communities.
As public awareness and government policy struggle to keep up with the pace of growth, and concerns rise over speculative development and market fragility, we look at the feasibility and sustainability of data centre hyper-scaling. Who stands to gain from it, what should we be asking our government to do about it, and how can we speak up for the communities, nature and the resources at risk? With the Environmental Audit Committee soon to share its report on the ‘Risks and Opportunities of the Sustainability of Data Centres’, we’ll consider how to use its findings and recommendations.
Our panel of expert speakers, including Global Action Plan, community leaders, CPRE and data centre developers, and chaired by author and Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien, will discuss what ‘good’ could look like: asking how data centre growth could be managed more sustainably, and how policy and planning regulations could be strengthened to support this.
Join us for an urgent, empowering and solutions-focused conversation, and come ready to share your own thoughts and ideas.
Hettie O’Brien is a journalist interested in money and power. She writes about financiers, fraudsters, short sellers, cities, shopping malls, history, economics and ideas. Her work exposes how complex systems and financial arrangements are transforming our lives by telling stories about the people and places they shape. Her first book, The Asset Class, is a narrative investigation of the private equity industry. It will be published on 9 April 2026 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) and 23 June 2026 by Grand Central (US), and was awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2024. She’s a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read and has previously worked for the New Statesman as an editor and writer, and as a reporter in Washington D.C.
Neal Kalita has been in Energy for over 10 years and in datacentre power and energy for the last 5 years covering EMEA and globally for some of the largest DC developers and operators. He has procured over 1TWh of renewable energy, managed an energy portfolio of +4TWh and secured over 2GW of power. He makes a distinction between Power & Energy, where Power is about Switching On a DC whilst Energy is about a DC Staying On. He is currently publishing a series of articles related to the impact of AI on DC development called ‘Actually Intelligent?’
Oliver Hayes is Head of Campaigns at Global Action Plan (GAP), where for seven years he has led their campaigning for fairer, low carbon digital systems. He runs GAP’s Stop Dirty Data Centres campaign, supporting communities resisting data centre developments across the UK, and instigated GAP’s recent legal victory, with Foxglove, in which the UK Government admitted “serious logical error” in their approval of a hyperscale data centre. Prior to Global Action Plan, Ollie worked at Friends of the Earth, leading campaigns on energy, air pollution, and airports expansion.
Dr Ambily Banerjee is the organiser of Slough Against Data Centres, a resident-led community group that has been active since July 2026. Ambily has a PhD in cancer research and spent a decade as an academic scientist at Imperial College and UCL. She then held Director positions at 3 global pharmaceutical companies – GSK, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson, with a specific focus on regulatory affairs, audit and risk management. At Novartis, she designed and led IHI READI, one of the largest public-private partnerships across Europe, focused on improving inclusion and transforming clinical trials. Ambily also serves as a Non-Executive Director of the Micro:bit Educational Foundation, which teaches digital skills to millions of children around the world.
Mary-Ann Ochota is a broadcaster, anthropologist and specialist adviser to organisations working across nature, place and people. She passionately believes that environmental justice and social justice are two sides of the same coin. Mary-Ann is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Patron of the Ridgeway National Trail, a member of the hillwalking advisory group at the British Mountaineering Council and is currently President of CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England. She also currently serves on Natural England’s Landscape Advisory Panel. She has written three acclaimed books on British archaeology and regularly writes and presents TV and radio programmes in the UK and internationally on archaeology, the environment and nature, and the outdoors. She is involved in public campaigns to improve access to, and understanding of, the countryside. She works with a network of grassroots community groups, businesses, public sector and environmental NGOs, including All the Elements, a network of individuals and organisations working to diversify the outdoors.
Event venue & nearby stays
The Conduit, 6 Langley Street, London, United Kingdom
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