Proposed London datacentre will have annual carbon footprint of 27,000 flights to New York

Exclusive: Planning documents show datacentre in North Ockendon would be incompatible with UK net zero targets

A “hyperscale” datacentre in outer London would generate more than 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to the carbon footprint of 27,000 flights from London to New York, planning documents show.

The East Havering Data Centre Campus (EHDCC) in North Ockendon would be one of the largest datacentres in Europe if approved by Havering council, using 218 hectares of green belt to run servers and data storage systems for AI and cloud computing. Its developer, Digital Reef, has described the scheme as “a unique opportunity to create a sustainable datacentre campus of the future”.