LSE Grantham Institute: Climate Litigation Hits 3,600 Cases — Data Centers the Next Frontier

The Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics published its Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2026 Snapshot on June 25, documenting 249 new cases filed in 2025 and a total corpus of more than 3,600 cases across 62 countries — up from 17 countries a decade ago. Twenty percent of U.S. cases filed in 2025 constitute "protective litigation" resisting Trump administration regulatory rollbacks, described by the authors as "without precedent." More than 50 strategic cases were filed against companies in the energy, finance, transport, real estate, and consumer goods sectors in 2025, and 2025 saw the first cases of insurance companies seeking to recover climate-related financial losses from governments. The report's most forward-looking finding for corporate counsel: data centers are the next major climate litigation target, with cases already filed in Chile, the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom challenging energy use, water consumption, and inadequate environmental review. For ESG practice groups advising technology, infrastructure, and finance clients, this signals that climate litigation exposure now extends well beyond fossil fuel companies — any company with a large data center footprint or significant AI infrastructure investment should be modeled for litigation risk.