‘People are standing up and fighting back’: the north Devon revolt against a vast AI datacentre

People outside a Torridge council meeting protesting against the 344-hectare datacentre proposed by Xlinks. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/ View image in fullscreen People outside a Torridge council meeting protesting against the 344-hectare datacentre proposed by Xlinks. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/ ‘People are standing up and fighting back’: the north Devon revolt against a vast AI datacentre Plans for one of Europe’s largest AI campuses in a Unesco-designated reserve have sparked a fierce local backlash The datacentre revolt spreading across the US has reached the rolling hills of north Devon in an uprising against a planned hyperscale AI data campus in the middle of a globally protected landscape. Perched on an inland cliff, the town of Great Torrington has views that stretch for miles over the landscape of the Unesco biosphere reserve in which it sits, taking in the winding River Torridge and rolling acres of wooded valley and wildflower meadows. Pastoral and peaceful, its history was notably punctured 1646 when the royalists’ resistance in the first English civil war was brought to an end a battle fought out in the narrow streets in heavy rain and darkness. Today, a very 21st-century threat is rippling through the same country lanes as the AI boom reaches the pubs, churches and parish halls of Great Torrington and its surrounding villages. Torrington datacentreThe countryside that makes up the biosphere has been selected by a British company, Xlinks, to house a 1.5GW AI datacentre, one of the largest in Europe, as well as a vast 1.8GW battery energy storage system, or BESS. About 344 hectares (850 acres) of countryside have been secured for the huge campus, with five vast buildings ranging in height from 50 to 130 feet. Listed buildings on the site, Xlinks says, will be relocated and transformed into a visitor centre. Such is the anger locally that the new campaign against the AI datacentre has drawn in tens of thousands of people, uncovered what campaigners say is evidence of secret deals and adopted tactics being used . A recent public meeting in Great Torrington was hosted . She was one of the forces behind achieving a permanent datacentre ban in Coachella, California, over concerns about air pollution, water and energy use. “We’re fighting the largest companies that have ever existed in the world, and that is scary but we are all fighting this together,” Humphreys said. “This is a global issue; we are all connected. People across the world are standing up and fighting back.” Maps of planned datacentre and campus in Great Torrington and its location in the wider regionToday within the halls and pubs of Great Torrington and the villages of Huntshaw and Weare Giffard, the AI project is the main talking point.