Developers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK’s total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.

The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK’s total carbon footprint.

In both cases, they appear to have compared one year of the proposed datacentre’s emissions with the UK’s entire five-year carbon budget, understating the significance of their emissions by a factor of five, according to experts at the tech justice nonprofit Foxglove.

Greystoke, a company planning to build another datacentre in north Lincolnshire, one of the largest in the UK, also appears to have misstated the emissions of its project in the same way. Taken together, the three developments will account for more than 1% of the UK’s carbon budget in 2033. This is the equivalent to the emissions of a mid-sized city such as Bristol.

“Google has serious questions to answer about its dubious datacentre pollution figures,” said Tim Squirrell, the head of strategy for Foxglove, which discovered the errors. “By comparing one year of datacentre emissions with five years of UK emissions, they’re making the environmental impact look five times smaller than it really is.”

He added: “Unless they can explain themselves, it looks like they are seriously misleading the council and the public over the climate pollution their facility will cause.”

These apparent misstatements are another example of a pile-up of faulty calculations surrounding AI development and its environmental footprint in the UK. Last month, the Guardian reported on a large gap between the government’s plan to decarbonise the economy and its roadmap for AI computing.

The two government departments behind these plans appeared to differ on their estimates for how much UK energy datacentres will use – by a factor of 10.

Google’s Thurrock datacentre, to be built on “grey belt” land, has claimed its emissions will amount to 0.033% of the UK’s budgeted carbon footprint between 2028 and 2032. In fact, its emissions during that period will be 0.165% of the total.

The North Weald datacentre, to be built on an airfield near Epping Forest, has said it will emit 0.043% of the UK’s total carbon budget from 2033 to 2037, but it will actually emit 0.215% of the total.

Steven Heather, a local councillor, said this datacentre had been given outline planning permission only and the planning department would research what Google was proposing.

“If there is a gross error, they’ll obviously pick up on it. When it goes to the submissions stage, the developers will have to come back with the proper figure.”

Greystoke’s datacentre in north Lincolnshire, Elsham Tech Park, has stated in planning documents that its emissions will be 0.1043% of the UK’s carbon budget in 2033, when in fact they will be 0.5215%.

Google and Greystoke have publicly argued that their developments will have a tolerable, in some cases insignificant, impact on the UK’s climate roadmap. Elsham Tech Park’s developers have said it will improve biodiversity on its campus by having bird and bat boxes, and wildflower grassland.

All three developments are classed as having a “minor adverse” impact on the UK’s overall climate goals.

However, the Thurrock datacentre will produce more emissions than an international airport, and Elsham Tech Park’s peak emissions will reach 1m tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2033-34 – just short of the 1.2m tonnes of carbon emissions of all the UK’s domestic flights.

Google representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

In a comment to the Guardian, Greystoke appeared to acknowledge the discrepancy, saying: “We expect to submit revised figures to the local planning authority as part of the planning process.”

Elsham Tech Park said its development would “see £10bn of private investment, generating thousands of well-paid operational and construction jobs in the region, and supporting local supply chains”.

A journalist who covered the case of a woman who said she was being tortured in prison was detained and beaten with pistols by Somali authorities, along with two others, for his reporting for the Guardian.

Mohamed Bulbul was arrested with the journalists Abdihafid Nor Barre and Abdishakur Mohamed Mohamud on Friday evening while in a restaurant in the centre of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. They said they were assaulted by members of Somalia’s US-trained counter-terrorism police unit and taken to be questioned by police. All three were released in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Media outlets and MPs said the arrests were unlawful and politically motivated. They come amid an intensifying crackdown as public anger grows with the ruling establishment, and the presidential term is due to end on 15 May.

Abdirahman Abdishakur, an MP and leader of the opposition Wadajir party, condemned the arrests of the journalists. He wrote in a post on X that the president of Somalia’s administration “appears consumed by fear, confusion as the end of its mandate approaches”.

He added: “Instead of addressing the growing public anger over forced displacement, land grabbing, and pursuing an inclusive political settlement to guide the country through this fragile transitional period, the administration has intensified repression against journalists, activists and outspoken young people.”

It is believed Bulbul’s detention was linked to reporting on the case of Sadia Moalim Ali, a 27-year-old rickshaw driver who is in prison for peaceful protest and her activism on social media. He has also been speaking out about security forces’ violations and forced evictions in Mogadishu.

On Thursday, the Guardian published a story by Bulbul, where Ali spoke about being tortured in Mogadishu central prison. She said she was stripped naked by two male guards in a room monitored by CCTV, kicked, beaten with a baton and left for two days in a small cell without food. The article was shared widely across Somali media, Facebook and X.

He and the two other journalists had been facing sustained threats and intimidation in recent weeks. Their detention happened at a time of heightened political pressure surrounding planned protests expected to take place on Sunday.

At the police headquarters, the three reporters said they were threatened by Mahdi Omar Mumin, Mogadishu police chief, should they continue to report on the protests.

In a statement released by Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), the journalists said that Mumin told them he was “tired of arresting journalists” and that if they did not remain silent about the protests and other developments in Mogadishu, including the case of Ali, the only option remaining for them would be “death”.

Somali Stream, the media organisation which Mohamud works for, condemned the arrests as “an illegal and politically motivated attack on independent journalism”.

AbdiKani Hamud Abokor, the outlet’s managing director, said: “Somali Stream strongly condemns the unlawful detention of Abdishakur [Mohamed] Mohamud, Abdihafid Nor [Barre], and Mohamed Bulbul. This is a deliberate attempt to terrorise journalists, suppress independent reporting and instil fear across Somalia’s media community.”

The news follows the arrest of several journalists earlier this week. On 6 May, at least five local journalists were arrested and had their equipment confiscated, according to SJS. Two other broadcast journalists, Ja’far Mohamed Jim’ale and cameraman Nur Hasan Ali remain in detention – their whereabouts are unknown, the organisation added.

According to the World Press Freedom Index, Somalia ranks 126 out of 180 countries. Journalists in the country work in an environment of great insecurity, according to Reporters Without Borders, which runs the index. With more than 50 media professionals killed since 2010, Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in Africa.

The Somalian authorities have been approached for a response.

The pro-European centre-right leader Péter Magyar has been sworn in as prime minister of Hungary, marking the official end to Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power.

Saturday’s ceremony – during which Magyar had invited people to join him to “write Hungarian history” together and “step through the gate of regime change” – comes a month after his opposition Tisza party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.

The result sparked jubilation in Budapest and beyond, as Orbán and his populist, nationalist movement had long been held up by the global far right as an example to emulate.

Minutes after he was sworn in, Magyar said Hungarians had given his party a mandate to launch a “new chapter” in the country’s history. “A mandate not only to change the government, but to change the system as well. To start again.”

Under Orbán’s watch, he said, Hungary had become the most corrupt country in the EU. “Orbán’s associates and the elite have a long way to go until they are confronted with what they have done,” he said, vowing that his government would seek justice against those who, even in the last hours, were trying to “steal everything”.

He reiterated his earlier calls for Orbán-era appointees to resign, asking them to do so by the end of the month. The first should be Tamás Sulyok, he said, in a reference to the president who had, moments earlier, nominated Magyar to form a government. Outside parliament, the comment was met with enthusiastic cheers.

Magyar pledged to build a more inclusive Hungary, one that would be more free, humane and hopeful than under Orbán’s populist nationalist movement. “What connects us will be stronger than what divides us,” he said. “Hungary will be home for every Hungarian, and everyone can feel like they have a place in the Hungarian nation. Family, friends and communities will be able to speak to each other again.”

Early on Saturday, people started pouring into the square outside the country’s neo-Gothic parliament to follow along as the inaugural session was broadcast on large screens. At each glimpse of Magyar, the crowd cheered, while some booed lawmakers from Fidesz and the extreme right Our Homeland party.

Many in the crowd had travelled hours to be there. “This is the first time I feel like it’s good to be Hungarian,” said Erzsébet Medve, 68, who had come from Miskolc in north-eastern Hungary. “I feel like I could cry.”

As a school teacher, she had long watched in frustration as Orbán and his Fidesz government left the education system deprived of funds. “The government had enough money, but they didn’t spend it there.”

Sitting next to her, Marianna Szűcs, 70, said she hoped Hungary would become a more livable country. “Now we feel like our children and grandchildren have a future here.”

As she spoke, the crowd behind her began cheering wildly as the newly elected speaker of the house, Ágnes Forsthoffer, announced that the EU flag would be returned to the building after it was taken down by Fidesz in 2014.

Szűcs said two of her children had had to move abroad. Both of them had lost their jobs, seemingly after she had spoken out against the Fidesz government, she said. “Now we hope they will be able to come home.”

The landslide victory, in which Tisza won 141 seats in the 199-seat parliament, was a stunning outcome for Magyar, who until recently had been a little known former member of Fidesz’s elite. He burst into public view in early 2024, after he turned on the party, laying bare the inner workings of a system he described as rotten and accusing officials of expanding their power and wealth at the expense of ordinary Hungarians.

The new parliament marks the first time since the country’s democratisation in 1990 that Orbán – whose decades-long career saw him shift from pro-democracy campaigner to a Russia-friendly figure lauded by the US Maga movement – will not sit in parliament. Late last month Orbán, 62, said he would instead focus on the reorganisation of his movement.

Magyar, 45, has vowed to use his large majority to undo the systems built by Orbán, who had stacked the country’s judiciary, media and state with loyalists as he sought to turn Hungary into a “petri dish for illiberalism”.

Beyond the country’s borders, Magyar has also vowed to rebuild Hungary’s long-strained relationship with the EU and work with the bloc to unlock billions in frozen EU funds.

Hints of this change were symbolically laced through the plans for Saturday’s swearing in: several anthems were to ring out, paying tribute to Hungary’s EU membership, its sizeable Roma minority, and ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries, while the lawyer Vilmos Kátai-Németh was to become the country’s first visually impaired minister, taking on the portfolio of social and family affairs. More than a quarter of lawmakers will be women – a record high in the country’s post-communist history.

It was an echo of the actions Magyar has taken in the weeks since the election, as he sought to emphasise the end of what he described as Hungary’s “two-decade-long nightmare”; vowing to suspend broadcasts from state media that functioned as Orbán mouthpieces, calling on Orbán-era appointees to resign; meeting twice with EU officials, and sending back the millions of Hungarian forints donated to him by an Orbán-linked supporter.

The task Magyar and his government face is huge. His promises to fix the country’s crumbling public services will come up against the country’s stagnating economy and a stubbornly high budget deficit. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how the many Orbán loyalists in media, academia and the judiciary will react to change.

Even so, the mood on Saturday was celebratory in Budapest. At a Tisza booth, crowds lined up to buy party swag, while others milled around waving Hungarian flags.

Even as left of centre and liberal parties are set to be absent from parliament for the first time since 1990, Budapest’s liberal mayor was swift to call on Hungarians to come together to mark the end of Fidesz’s grip on power and hail those who had long stood up to the system.

“Teachers fired, civilians and journalists humiliated, small churches torn apart,” wrote Gergely Karácsony – who has long clashed with Orbán – on social media. “We can finally leave this era behind us – but first, let us remember the everyday heroes and express our gratitude with a farewell to the system.”