A data centre is uniting bugs and bikers to fight Google: 'We demand you replace what you destroy'

The alliance between the motorbike club and the bug conservationists is, Mark Sexton concedes, an unlikely one.

“We’d not be seen as natural bedfellows,” the Essex local tells Big Issue. “So it’s a bit remarkable.”

Sexton is a member of the Thurrock Hammers, a speedway club whose members love tearing around a tarmac ring on petrol-guzzling motorbikes. Buglife are conservationists obsessed with halting invertebrate extinction.

Under normal circumstances, a live-and-let-live relationship might be the best they could hope for. “These are not normal circumstances,” says Buglife’s Jamie Robins.

Google is planning an enormous new data centre in Thurrock, Essex. If approved by Thurrock Council, the ‘Arena Essex’ facility will stretch over 128 acres, concreting over an important habitat for bees, butterflies, plants and birds. It will also mean the destruction of the Hammers’ old speedway ground – torpedoing any chance of it reopening after its much-protested closure in 2018.

There are currently around 500 data centres across the country, with many more in the planning. New prime minister Andy Burnham – who comes into power as Britain races to expand the digital infrastructure needed for cloud computing and AI – has named Kanishka Narayan as the UK’s first dedicated AI minister. But despite this pro-AI appointment at the top of government, new centres often face fierce local opposition. 

In Essex, Buglife and the Hammers have both submitted planning objections to Google’s scheme, albeit
on very different grounds.

“This is a wildlife site of national importance,” says Robins.

“The community want our speedway back,” adds Sexton.

Seen from above, the Thurrock site – wedged between the Mardyke Valley and Lakeside Retail Park – doesn’t
look particularly special. A large parallelogram of green and brown grass, it is hedged by trees and bisected by an access road. On the right, there is a large pond. In the middle, the inactive speedway course.

But its appearance from the air disguises how ecologically significant it really is.

“The brownfields in South Essex are refuges for a whole bunch of rare invertebrates and other wildlife – they’re a refuge for all the species that have suffered from the losses of natural land and habitat,” explains Robins.

Brownfield sites get a bad rap, ecologically speaking. Previously developed land, the term conjures images of post-industrial wasteland. In Thurrock, this is far from the case. Decades of industrial activity on London’s eastern edge have produced a mosaic of different-aged habitats in close proximity, which is what invertebrates need to complete their life cycles in one place.

It’s home to the brown-banded carder bee, the five-banded weevil-wasp and the dingy skipper butterfly, plus endangered plants like the broad-leaved cudweed, as well as red-listed nightingales.

Read more:

• London’s data centres use 750,000 homes’ worth of electricity. It’s bad news for the housing crisis
• Britain’s data watchdog has a warning for big tech and AI companies: ‘We’re watching you’
• How data is the gift that keeps giving for big business

Nearby, the now-inactive speedway was for years home to another type of endangered species – a community-run sports club.

Formerly known as the Lakeside Hammers, the Thurrock Hammers team competed at the Arena Essex Raceway for over 30 years. They still field a ‘nomad team’ at other speedway events.

“My history with the speedway goes back to the middle ’70s, so that tells you how old I am,” Sexton says. He has been a fan for decades, and ran the supporters’ club for many years. Now, he’s the club’s director. The club has always drawn fierce loyalty. “For many, many people, for many, many years, it was the thing that they loved doing.”

In 2017, the land on which the speedway sat was sold to LSL Partners, a property investment firm. They promised a new housing development, featuring 2,500 homes, a lido, primary school and health centre.

The club members were gutted. “But then the houses didn’t even get built,” says Sexton. “So it’s just been vacant.”

In 2023, Google purchased the land for £47 million, with plans to build a hyperscale data centre.

It’s part of a nationwide computer-power expansion. The government has forecast a thirteenfold rise in computing power demand over the next decade, and ministers have increasingly been backing new data centre developments as “critical” infrastructure.

The environmental consequences are big: Foxglove, a campaign group of environmental lawyers, calculates that the proposed Essex development alone would emit half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Google’s own planning application describes this as “a minor adverse and not significant impact when compared to the UK carbon budgets” – but it is approaching the annual emissions of an entire country like Greenland.

Google has told Big Issue that “the figures referenced do not take into account the company’s carbon-free commitments and the likely mitigations that follow.

“Google is actively working towards powering all our data centres, including new facilities, with 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030.”

A spokesperson added: this “essential digital infrastructure”, will “contribute positively to both the UK economy and its decarbonisation goals”.

Nonetheless, Buglife and Foxglove both have petitions opposing the data centre. Buglife’s has collected over 30,000 signatures.

“At the moment, Google’s plans would lead to 80% loss of the habitat on the site. It includes special Thames Terrace grasslands,” Robins says. “That’s a habitat type that was last thought to be down to the tens of hectares.”

The Hammers initially had a slightly more ambivalent relationship to the development. They at first reached out to work with the tech giant, citing the planning framework that requires developers to replace community assets they destroy. But when Google didn’t respond, they lodged a planning application objection, opposing the data centre build on the grounds of community interest. 

“Our community – if you like – demands, and the legislation demands, c,” Sexton says.

The outcome lies in the hands of Thurrock Council, which is currently considering the data centre decision. 

Even if they reject it, the central government might step in: in June, when Slough council didn’t make a decision on a proposed greenbelt data centre, planning ministers made a decision to give it the go-ahead, deeming it to be “critical national infrastructure”.

Nonetheless, the conservationists and the speedway are hoping that community opposition can move the needle – and protect both biking and the next-door bug wildlife area.

“We’re approaching [the data centre] from different points of view,” Sexton says, “but we are extraordinarily sympathetic to each other’s points of view.”

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