The UK government significantly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, as newly published data reveals that officials have raised their estimate of carbon emissions from AI by a factor of more than 100.
Revised Figures Raise Alarm
According to updated figures quietly released this week, energy consumption by AI datacentres in the UK could result in emissions of up to 123 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) over the next decade. This amount is roughly equivalent to the emissions generated by 2.7 million people. The revised estimate replaces a previous projection—since deleted—that claimed emissions would peak at 0.142 million tonnes of CO₂ in a single year.
The sharp increase has intensified fears about the role of energy-intensive datacentres in worsening the climate emergency. Environmental campaigners have expressed outrage, noting that the world has only a limited carbon budget remaining.
Campaigners React
Patrick Galey, head of investigations for the Global Witness climate campaign, warned: “We have a handful of years until our carbon budget is exhausted. To waste what little bandwidth we have left—when 750 million people worldwide lack access to electricity—assisting some of the richest men ever to hone their plagiarism bots would be a historic idiocy that future generations are unlikely to forgive today’s leaders for.”
Government's Compute Roadmap
The latest estimates were revealed in a revision to the UK’s “compute roadmap,” which outlines the government’s plan “to build a world-class compute ecosystem” for delivering artificial intelligence in the UK. This initiative is central to the government’s hopes for economic growth. However, AI datacentres require vast amounts of electricity to operate—far more than traditional datacentres used for online data storage—and most of this power continues to be generated by fossil fuels.
According to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the carbon impact of the planned AI buildout could range from 34 million to 123 million tonnes of CO₂, representing approximately 0.9% to 3.4% of the UK’s projected total emissions between 2025 and 2035. The lower end of this range would depend on greater efficiency in AI models and hardware, as well as faster decarbonisation of the UK’s energy grid.
Watchdog Investigation
Officials from DSIT appear to have made the revision after an investigation by Foxglove, an independent watchdog, and the Carbon Brief news site revealed that the initial figures were a significant underestimate. Tim Squirrell, head of strategy at Foxglove, stated: “The government has a legally binding commitment to reach net zero by 2050. This already sat awkwardly alongside its hell-for-leather embrace of a hyperscale AI datacentre buildout, which unchecked could double the electricity consumption of the entire country. The situation has now been revealed to be much, much worse, given the fact the government doesn’t seem to have done even the most basic arithmetic needed to measure the potential new carbon emissions of these datacentres.”
The government declined to comment on the record.
