Climate change versus economic growth, a dilemma?

The Guardian reports that the government department responsible for a decarbonised economy powered by clean, renewable energy is at odds with that intention of making the UK an AI. superpower, with those responsible for the two visions not agreeing on their numbers.

They say that the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) thinks AI datacentres will consume 6GW of electricity by 2030, while the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) appears to think they will use less than a tenth of that:

Tim Squirrell, the head of strategy for the NGO Foxglove, said: “The government’s cluelessness over the environmental impact of datacentres would be laughable, if it weren’t so alarming.”

Cecilia Rikap, a researcher at University College London, said: “There are two ways to interpret this ‘misalignment’: either DESNZ and DSIT are incompetent, or there’s some kind of magical thinking about AI and big tech. Either way, the episode uncovers how these corporations control not only the AI value chain, but also the UK government.”

DESNZ is responsible for the UK’s carbon budget growth and delivery plan, which sets out how the government will reach its international climate targets.

In January, Foxglove filed an environmental impact assessment request with the department, asking how it had incorporated AI datacentres into its projections for Britain’s emissions. In response, DESNZ referred researchers to its broader forecasts for the energy use of Britain’s “commercial services” sector, and said it did not hold separate projections for datacentre growth.

The forecasts appear to project that the energy use of the entire sector will grow by 528MW between 2025 and 2030 – equivalent to adding the consumption of 1.7m homes by the end of the decade.

This projection is 10 times lower than the amount of electricity the government has committed to AI datacentres as part of its UK compute roadmap. That policy paper, put forward by DSIT in 2025, sets out a “bold, long-term plan to transform our national compute ecosystem” by building AI datacentres.

It adds: “We forecast that the UK will need at least 6GW of AI-capable datacentre capacity by 2030.”

This will come from multiple AI growth zones – hubs across the country where the government is attempting to attract investment into datacentres. Each would require at least 500MW of electricity – an amount only slightly less than DESNZ’s forecast for the increase in energy usage of the entire commercial services sector.

It is unclear how the discrepancy between the two departments’ forecasts arose. But one day after the Guardian requested comment from DSIT and DESNZ, DSIT appears to have revised its figures published on its website for the total emissions of the AI datacentre sector, raising them more than a hundredfold.

It is good that the two departments are now talking to each other, however the power needs of an AI operation on this scale are going to challenge other government objectives especially around climate change.