"The government's cluelessness over the environmental impact of datacentres would be laughable, if it weren't so alarming."
"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."
"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."
"The policy paper put forward by DSIT in 2025 sets out a bold, long-term plan to transform our national compute."
The UK envisions a decarbonised economy and aims to become an AI superpower, but government departments disagree on AI datacentre electricity consumption. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology estimates 6GW by 2030, while the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero believes it will be less than 0.6GW. This discrepancy raises concerns about the government's understanding of the environmental impact of datacentres. Foxglove filed an environmental impact assessment request, but DESNZ referred to broader forecasts without specific datacentre projections, indicating a significant gap in energy consumption estimates.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]