To meet the 2030 target based on current pre-AI power use, the government believes Britain needs to double its onshore wind, triple its solar power and quadruple its offshore wind capabilities. However, energy experts caution that achieving this goal will be extremely stretching without significant policy changes and infrastructure investments.
Building and running the servers that form the central nervous system of AI is hugely energy-intensive, with ever more needed to train and run increasingly complex AI models. This energy demand is expected to continue climbing as AI technologies evolve.
Kate Mulvany, a principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, highlights that current schemes and policies are insufficient to meet the government’s aggressive 2030 clean energy targets, especially given the rising electricity consumption from data centers.
Emerging energy storage technologies could potentially allow for wind and solar to provide continuous power, but for now, markets heavily populated with data centres tend to rely more on gas, which poses challenges for clean power targets.
Collection
[
|
...
]