Datacentres facing increase in global climate-related legal cases, report finds

The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world from Chile to Ireland , a report has found. In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications. One of the first cases was filed in 2020 in Chile ’s capital Santiago, where Google was planning a huge datacentre in the Cerrillos area. A group of residents and the local council challenged the permits given to the global tech company, raising concerns about the impact of the development on the city’s already climate-stressed water supply . The lawsuit succeeded in halting the Cerrillos project – on the grounds that climate impacts had not been properly considered – but not the wider explosion of datacentres, which is draining Chile’s already drought-stricken wetlands . The LSE report identified Ireland as a “hotspot” for litigation against datacentres. The government wants the sector to expand , even though it is already consuming more than a fifth of the nation’s electricity . …