$68bn of US projects stalled in three months
The warning follows events in the US. US opposition offers a warning: Data Center Watch found that 45 projects worth $68bn were blocked or delayed between April and June 2026. It counts 843 opposition groups across 49 states.
SAIL says AI itself is “only a surface-level concern”. The deeper drivers, it says, are distrust of corporate and government promises, electricity costs and fear of stranded assets, meaning facilities that could sit underused if AI demand falls short. “The same arguments have begun to appear here,” the taskforce wrote, speaking of Britain.
Water and electricity constraints slow data centre expansion
Most data centre development is in the south and east of England, where water stress is highest, and Water UK says the buffer between supply and demand is as little as 2% in many areas. Some data centres use large volumes of water to cool their equipment.
Power is the other constraint. This week Microsoft withdrew from Nscale’s planned AI data centre in Essex after the local grid operator said it could not supply enough electricity until the 2030s.
What a prosperity compact would offer
SAIL’s answer to local opposition is what it calls a “prosperity compact”: an agreement between the government, data centre companies and local communities that sets out what an area receives in return for hosting a data centre. At the moment, these benefits are negotiated case by case.
SAIL proposes two main benefits. Each data centre would give something back to the area, either money or facilities, and larger sites would give more. Councils would also keep more of the business rates, a tax on commercial property, that data centres pay. The government already does this in AI Growth Zones, the areas in England it has chosen for large AI data centres, where councils keep all the extra business rates for 25 years. Elsewhere, it says local benefits are agreed through the normal planning process.
Campaigners reject the trade
Opponents argue that payments do not address their objections. Joseph Miller, director of PauseAI UK, said people would find it “undignified to be bought off by huge tech companies”. Donald Campbell of the campaign group Foxglove said extra money for councils would “come from the pocket of central government services like the NHS”, while the tech companies paid nothing more. In Scotland, Action to Protect Rural Scotland says 15 local campaigns are already opposing data centre plans.