“Datacentres are growing target of global climate-related legal cases, report finds”, 25 June 2026

The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland, a report has found.

In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implication

One of the first cases was filed in 2020 in Chile’s capital, Santiago, where Google was planning a huge datacentre in the Cerrillos area…

The lawsuit succeeded in halting the Cerrillos project, on the grounds that climate impacts had not been properly considered…

The LSE report identified Ireland as a hotspot for litigation against datacentres…

There is also a growing legal backlash against datacentres in the US…

In the UK, campaigners took legal action against the government’s decision to force through construction of a “hyperscale” datacentre in Buckinghamshire…

The LSE report said cases in the US and UK showed how litigation “can drive changes in climate-related decision-making even in the absence of positive judgments”…