Britain is at risk of blackouts if ministers allow electricity-guzzling data centres to be built across the country unchecked, a top Labour donor has warned. Green energy boss Dale Vince said the country could fail to keep the lights on unless Andy Burnham ensures data centres are “responsible for their own power needs”.
Vince warns against unchecked data centre growth
The Ecotricity founder, who has donated millions of pounds to Labour, urged the public not to believe the “hype” about blackouts in the short term. But he warned: “We will be at risk of blackouts, however, if we allow data centres to proliferate without making them responsible for their own power needs.
“We can’t allow them to simply connect to the grid as it is, with their massive need for power. That will be crucial to keeping the lights on in Britain.”
Data centre expansion and energy strain
The number of data centres in the UK is set to increase by almost a fifth, figures have suggested. Data centres are giant warehouses which house powerful computers used to run digital services from movie streaming to online banking.
There are currently around 568 in the UK, which consume 6% of electricity available on the National Grid, but the growing strain of AI on energy and water supplies has sparked outrage among communities where they are set to be based. Data centres are both energy and water intensive because running millions of computer processors for 24 hours a day generates huge amounts of heat that must be continuously removed to prevent system failure.
Political and environmental concerns
Caroline Voaden, Liberal Democrat MP for South Devon, said: “Hours after I asked the AI Minister [Kanishka Narayan] about the expansion of water-intensive data centres, the Environment Agency declared an extreme drought in Devon.
“For now, those two events are unrelated, but in the future, they could be. There is a very real question about how the Government will fulfil its ambition to triple data centre capacity by 2030 without jeopardising water and energy supplies.
“Ministers are doing a poor job of supporting communities where data centres are planned. They feel this technology is being forced on them despite continuous warnings about its impact on the jobs market and the future of the planet.
“I do think it’s crucial that we have AI sovereignty here in the UK, but the Government has a long way to go to show it cares about communities more than tech firms.”
The UK is already the third-largest nation for data centres behind the US and Germany. The Government believes data centres are central to the UK's economic future - designating them critical national infrastructure in September 2024. They currently face significant delays to connect to the grid, on top of planning approval issues.
Government response
Climate Minister Katie White said: “Water security is intrinsic to our planning in terms of resilience and preparedness for the future.
“In terms of AI and data centres, they present both an opportunity and a risk for us in terms of managing. From the energy side, they can help us reduce energy use and use energy more effectively across the grid.
“At the same time, some models have been energy hungry and so how do we manage that effectively within our system because we want to have AI but we want to do that in a way that is most sustainable.”
She said her department is working across the government to ensure the roll out of data centres is sustainable.
