Data Centers Are the New Target in Climate Litigation, LSE Report Finds

A London School of Economics annual review of climate litigation, published on June 25, 2026, has identified data centers as an accelerating front in global environmental legal battles. Analyzing roughly 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the report documents a clear trend: campaigners, residents, and environmental groups are increasingly turning to the courts to challenge the energy sources, water consumption, and air pollution linked to data center operations.

The cases span multiple continents and target different stages of data center development, from planning permits to grid connections to day-to-day operations.

A Precedent-Setting Case in Chile

One of the most consequential cases in the report dates to 2020, when residents and Santiago's local council sued Google over a planned facility in the Cerrillos district. The challenge centered on whether climate impacts, particularly the strain on the city's water supply, had been adequately assessed before permits were granted. The lawsuit succeeded, halting the project on the grounds that those impacts had not been properly considered. That outcome now serves as a template for similar challenges elsewhere.

Ireland's Fossil Fuel Carve-Out Under Legal Scrutiny

Ireland presents a particularly concentrated battleground. Data centers already consume more than a fifth of the country's total electricity, and a December ruling by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) gave large energy users, including data centers, a six-year window to continue operating on fossil fuels before a requirement of at least 80% renewables kicks in. Three organizations, Friends of the Irish Environment, Friends of the Earth Ireland, and ClientEarth, are now pursuing a judicial review of that decision, arguing the exemption is incompatible with Ireland's climate obligations.

U.S. Litigation: From Clean Air to Grid Infrastructure

Across the United States, the legal pressure is arriving from multiple directions. In Mississippi, the NAACP has filed suit against Elon Musk's xAI, alleging the company violated the Clean Air Act by running portable methane gas generators at its data center without the required permits. In Georgia and Pennsylvania, separate litigation targets state regulators who approved new fossil fuel infrastructure specifically to supply data center demand. California's city of Pittsburg has taken a regulatory rather than adversarial approach, mandating that a local data center use renewable energy and recycled water for cooling.

UK Challenges Hyperscale Expansion

In the United Kingdom, tech justice non-profit Foxglove and environmental charity Global Action Plan, represented by law firm Leigh Day, have brought legal action against the government's approval of a hyperscale data center in Buckinghamshire. The challenge questions whether the project's environmental consequences were given sufficient weight before planning permission was granted.

Taken together, the LSE report's findings signal that data center operators, and the regulators who permit them, can no longer treat environmental scrutiny as a secondary concern. Legal exposure now tracks the entire lifecycle of a facility, from site selection and water rights through to the composition of its power supply.