New Datacentres Risk Doubling Great Britain's Electricity Use, Regulator Says

Source: Slashdot

Overview

New datacentre projects in Great Britain are projected to demand more electricity than the country’s current peak consumption, according to the energy regulator Ofgem.

Key Findings

• Around 140 proposed datacentre schemes, many driven by artificial‑intelligence workloads, could require up to 50 GW of electricity.
• This is 5 GW more than the United Kingdom’s present peak demand.
• The demand surge was highlighted in an Ofgem consultation on new connections to the power grid, noting a sharp increase in applications between November 2024 and June 2025, with datacentres accounting for a large share.

Context

• The growth in datacentre demand has outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts.
• At the same time, new renewable‑energy projects are not being connected to the grid quickly enough to meet the government’s clean‑energy targets for the end of the decade.

Potential Impacts

• The work required to connect the expanding number of datacentres could delay other projects that are deemed “critical for decarbonisation and economic growth.”
• Datacentres serve as the central nervous system for AI tools such as chatbots and image generators, underpinning services like ChatGPT and Gemini.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.