Much to the delight of the UK’s recently elected Labour Government, AWS (Amazon Web Services) has announced plans to invest £8bn ($6.1bn) over the next five years building, operating, and maintaining data centres in the UK.

The company estimates this investment will contribute £14bn to the UK’s GDP through to 2028, and will support an average of 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs on an annual basis across local UK businesses, with posts formed along the data centre supply chain in construction, engineering, and telecoms, amongst others.

Since 2020, AWS has invested more than £3bn in the UK, giving a planned total investment of £11bn in the UK between 2020 and 2028.

Interestingly, AWS states that ‘cloud computing has not only reduced costs and increased innovation, it also helps businesses and the public sector to improve their energy efficiency and sustainability too.’

Missing from the announcement, however, is any insight into the associated environmental impact of such a substantial data centre build-out. This ranges from the physical infrastructure of building the data centres, from concrete to rare earth metals, and on to heavy goods transporting materials.

Post-construction, a substantial expansion of the AWS data centre footprint across the UK will have an impact on the country’s already strained natural resources such as water and electricity provision – already contentious issues that have seen planning permission refused at various proposed data centre builds around the world.

It is worth noting also that AWS is increasingly commercialising sustainability solutions ‘from carbon tracking to energy conservation, to waste reduction, using AWS services to ingest, analyse, and manage sustainability data.’

There is no doubt that the latest components which will be used in the new data centres will be more energy-efficient than legacy components, but AWS UK’s carbon reduction plan commits the company to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040—more than 15 years from now – although it has committed to powering operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.

The investment in ‘UK plc’ is to be welcomed, but with both the Labour Government and AWS having made public commitments to long-term sustainability goals and ‘green’ power, it was surprising not to see any reference to it in this otherwise very positive announcement – especially as, without sustainable energy and water cooling, the proposed data centres may face planning hurdles and opposition from the outset.