ABBOTS LANGLEY, England (AP) — Originally built to store farmers’ crops, the tithe barn on the outskirts of the English village of Abbots Langley has been transformed into homes that preserve its centuries of history. Today, its residents are fighting to prevent neighboring development that represents the future.

A proposal to build a data center on a field across the road was rejected by local authorities in the face of fierce opposition from villagers. But he’s being given a second chance by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government, which is pursuing reforms to boost economic growth following his Labor Party’s election victory in July.

Residents of Abbots Langley, 30 kilometers northwest of London, fear the facility will strain local resources and create noise and traffic that will damage the character of the quiet village, which is home to a few more than 20,000 inhabitants. Off the main street is a church with a stone tower built in the 12th century and, further down the road, a picturesque circular courtyard of rustic thatched cottages which were once a farmhouse modeled on the one built for the French queen Marie-Antoinette.

“It’s just horribly inappropriate,” said Stewart Lewis, 70, who lives in one of the converted homes in the 600-year-old tithe barn. “I think any reasonable person anywhere would say, ‘Wait, they want a data center?’ This is not the place for that.

As the artificial intelligence boom fuels demand for cloud computing for server farms around the world, such projects pit commercial considerations, national priorities and local interests against each other.

British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has stepped in to review appeals filed by developers of three data center projects after they were rejected by local authorities, effectively taking the decision out of the hands of city planners. These proposals include Abbots Langley and two projects in Buckinghamshire, located west of London. The first decision is expected by January.

The plans are controversial because the data centers would be built on “green belt” land, set aside to prevent urbanization. Rayner wants press the green belt for development, saying much of it is poor quality. One proposed project in Buckinghamshire, for example, involves redeveloping an industrial park next to a busy motorway.

“Although this is land officially designated as a green belt, there is nothing ‘green’ about the site today,” said Stephen Beard, global head of data centers at Knight Frank , a real estate consultancy firm working on the project.

“It’s actually an eyesore which is very visible from the M25 motorway,” he said.

Greystoke, the company behind the Abbots Langley center and a second Buckinghamshire project which will be built on a former landfill site, did not respond to requests for comment. In an online video for Abbots LangleySays a company representative: “We did a comprehensive search of sites, and this is the best.” It did not specify which businesses could use the center.

The UK government is making data centers a central part of its economic growth plans, viewing them as “critical national infrastructure” to give businesses the confidence to invest in them. Starmer announced deals for new centers, including a £10 billion ($13 billion) investment from a private equity firm black stone to build what will be Europe’s largest AI data center in the North East of England.

The land at the Abbots Langley Data Center is currently used for grazing horses. It is bordered on two other sides by a cluster of affordable housing and a highway.

Greystoke’s plans to build two large buildings totaling 84,000 square meters (904,00 square feet) and measuring up to 20 meters (66 feet) in height have alarmed Lewis and other villagers, who fear that everything else nearby be eclipsed.

They also doubt Greystoke’s promise that the project will create up to 260 jobs.

“Everything will be automated, so they won’t need staff,” said technology consultant Jennifer Stirrup, 51, who lives in the area.

Not everyone in the village is opposed.

Retiree Bryan Power said he would welcome the data center, believing it would benefit the area in the same way as another big project on the other side of the village, that of Warner Bros. Studio tour featuring a Harry Potter exhibition.

“It will create jobs regardless. It will be good. Yeah. No problem. Because if it doesn’t come, it will go somewhere else,” Power, 56, said.

One of the biggest concerns about data centers is their environmental impact, particularly the enormous amounts of electricity they require. Greystoke says the installation will consume 96 megawatts of “IT load”. But James Felstead, director of a renewable energy company and Lewis’ neighbor, said the region’s power grid would not be able to meet such additional demand.

It’s a problem reflected across Europe, where data center energy demand is expected to triple by the end of the decade, according to consultancy McKinsey. As the AI-powered data boom has prompted Google, Amazon and Microsoft to turn to nuclear energy as a clean energy source, concerns about their environmental footprint have already sparked tensions around data centers elsewhere.

Google was forced to stop plans in September for a $200 million data center in the Chilean capital, Santiago, after community complaints about its potential water and energy consumption.

In Ireland, where many Silicon Valley companies have their European headquarters, the grid manager has temporarily closed new data centers around Dublin until 2028, fearing they would consume too much electricity.

A massive data center project in northern Virginia narrowly won county approval last year, amid strong opposition from residents concerned about its environmental impact. Other places like Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore have imposed various restrictions on data centers.

Public knowledge of the industry is still low, but “people are increasingly realizing that these data centers are quite problematic,” said Sebastian Lehuede, senior lecturer in ethics, AI and society at King’s College from London, who studied the case of Google in Chile.

As awareness of their environmental impact grows, Lehuede said, “I’m sure we’ll encounter more opposition from different communities. »