Welcome to Devolved Digest, a series that will delve into the nuances in policy across the devolved regions of the United Kingdom.
This edition of the Devolved Digest explores data centres. Businesses around the world have become reliant on data, and these data centres store, distribute and interpret data utilising software and hardware at their disposal. It is not just businesses that use these data centres. Companies like Microsoft, Dropbox, and Apple Cloud allow personal users to use these data centres, too, and this is rapidly growing in use. In 2018, 850m people globally used iCloud, but this figure more than doubled to 2.3bn people by 2020.
Data centres have dramatically changed how people and businesses engage with data and technological developments. Data centres are linked to the UK’s National Grid infrastructure and use an ever-increasing amount of power. The uncertain impact of increasing power demand from data centres on the UK’s net zero goal and energy consumption targets has caused division among politicians, academics and the public.
This briefing will analyse the impact of data centres on the UK, assessing the economic, environmental and legislative implications that their rise and use will have in the United Kingdom. This will be done through an analysis of each of the devolved nations and Combined Authorities to provide a comprehensive understanding of how devolution impacts data centres, both in the present and in the future.
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