Letter by Shri E A S Sarma, Former Secretary to the Government of India to the Union Minister of Environment, Forests & Climate Change
AI/ Data Centres cause irreparable environmental havoc, displace marginal farmers and result in widespread human rights violations. The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change must fulfil its duty to protect environment and forests while the state governments are bending backwards to encourage foreign and Indian AI/ Data Centre projects to be set up in their state, completely ignoring environmental and social concerns.
To
Shri Bhupender Yadav
Minister
Union Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MEFCC)
Dear Shri Bupendra Yadav,
You are aware of the mad rush globally to set up AI/Data Centres that consume enormous quantities of water and electricity. According to some estimates, the cumulative global capacity of data centres will reach 200 GW during the next ten years, of which 50% will come up in the USA, 30% in Asia-Pacific and the rest in other regions including India (https://countercurrents.org/2026/05/mad-rush-for-ai-data-centres-in-india-at-what-social-cost/)
Some data centre projects in the USA have met with stiff community resistance, as they create local water scarcity, thermal stress and pressure on electricity supplies. In Europe, several government agencies have raised concerns about the threat to data sovereignty from data centres run by US-based companies. IT companies like Google are therefore shifting their projects to developing countries like India, where data protection laws are fragmented, environmental regulation fragile and crony capitalism rampant.
Google-Raiden-Adani conglomerate has already started site operations in and around Visakhapatnam. Reliance has also been allotted land near Bhogapuram airport near Visakhapatnam. All those sites are located in water-scarce areas, indicating the impending water crisis that they will soon cause.
The cumulative capacity of AI/DataCentres in India is projected to reach a level of 17GW or even more by 2030.
Local political leaders in India are bending backwards to offer promoters of data centres unprecedented tax concessions, along with huge subsidies on land, water and electricity. The Union Finance Minister had announced a “tax holiday” for “foreign data centres” till 2047. Evidently, the Finance Ministry is blissfully unaware of the adverse environmental implications of data centres and the threat posed by data centres owned by foreign agencies. It is ironic that Indian taxpayers and land losers should subsidise foreign data-centre companies earning trillions of dollars of profits annually.
As far as data-centre projects taken up in and around Visakhapatnam are concerned, in three letters dated 25-4-2026, 28-4-2026 and 17-5-2026 (stop-illegal-hill-destruction-for-google-adani-data-centre-near-visakhapatnam-reservoir-mefcc-urged) addressed to Secretary (MEFCC), I have raised serious concerns about the environmental havoc they have already created (see picture below- https://www.sakshi.com/telugu-news/andhra-pradesh/uncontrolled-excavations-simhachalam-hill-name-data-center-2787134) and the environmental regulations that they have already breached.
Your Ministry is yet to respond to those letters.
Evidently, your Ministry has not grasped the long-term, irreversible implications of AI/Data Centres!
In that connection, let me bring to your notice a comprehensive study by a UN agency (https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:10647/UNU-INWEH-Report-The_Env_Cost_of_AI-2026.pdf) which says,
“one of the most consequential dimensions of AI that remains comparatively underexamined is its environmental footprint and the justice implications that follow from where and how AI infrastructure expands. AI is not “just code”; it also involves physical infrastructure and supply chains, including data centers, chips, electricity generation, cooling systems, water withdrawals, land occupation, critical minerals, and eventual e-waste.”
What is the environmental footprint of a 1 GW data centre in the Indian context?
| Electricity | 11.4 TWH per year |
| Water | 8.1 billion litres per year |
| Carbon | 8.1 billion tonnes |
| Land | > 600 acres |
If 17 GW of data centre capacity comes up by 2030 in India, those data centres will consume 194 TWH, which will be 4 times the electricity demand of Delhi by that year. Similarly, 17 GW of data centre capacity will consume 138 billion litres of water by 2030, equivalent to 15-18 times the water demand of Delhi by that year. The carbon footprint of 17 GW capacity of data centres is comparable to that of Delhi by 2030.
Where arable lands are given to data centres, considering that the per capita arable land use in our country is 0.3 acres, 17 GW data-centre capacity will displace more than 30,000 marginal farmers, mostly dalits, dislocating their lives and livelihood. They are also a part of the environment that will stand damaged.
In Visakhapatnam, two sites handed over to a foreign AI/Data Centre conglomerate are located in forest lands, one of them also located in an eco-sensitive zone notified by your Ministry (see picture above), blocking water inflows into the Mudasarlova Reservoir, which provides drinking water for the city’s residents, demonstrating the fact that political crony capitalism has no limits. Once cleared, that site located in the reservoir’s catchment will silt the reservoir, further compounding the problem of its ability to provide drinking water for the people. One should not be surprised if that data centre will also add its own pollutants to the water stored in the reservoir, adversely impacting the health of the people.
Had your Ministry remained committed to its Constitutional obligation (Article 48A) to “protect and improve” the environment, it would have directed the AP government by now to submit the details of all those projects for a comprehensive environmental impact appraisal under the provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act and the Forest (Conservation) Act, read with the landmark directions given by the apex court in the well-known Godavarman case. The fact that your Ministry has chosen to maintain a strategic silence on it shows that your Ministry has abandoned that obligation and has joined the bandwagon of cheer leaders for environmental destruction by private corporate agencies.
Let me remind you, Mr Minister, that, the tax-payer need not be burdened any longer to maintain a large Ministry like yours, if it no longer cares to discharge its primary and most important responsibility to protect and improve the environment. MEFCC is not there to rubber-stamp projects in a routine manner, when those projects violate the letter and spirit of Article 48A.
I am writing this letter to make you and your other colleagues in MEFCC to ponder over your primary role, that of protecting the environment, not that of degrading it.
If you still feel that your Ministry is there to intervene and stop anyone making efforts to damage the environment, you should get every project of AI/Data Centre in the country examined in a comprehensive manner, ensure that they are compliant with the environment and forest laws, before proceeding further.
Regards,
Yours sincerely,
E A S Sarma
Former Secretary to the Government of India
Visakhapatnam