UK AI power demand estimates diverge

Power demand forecasts for AI data centers have diverged sharply between UK government departments.

• DSIT projected that AI data centers would need at least 6GW of power by 2030.
• In contrast, DESNZ put the increase in power use across the entire commercial services sector from 2025 to 2030 at 528MW, less than one-tenth of DSIT's forecast.
• This discrepancy has drawn criticism that, with the UK's carbon budget, net zero plans, and AI infrastructure expansion all interlinked, there is a lack of realistic estimates for power supply and demand.

DSIT also revised, in a supplementary document to its compute roadmap, the 10-year cumulative emissions from AI compute from the previous 0.025-0.142 MtCO2 to 34-123 MtCO2. This represents 0.9-3.4% of the UK's total 10-year emissions, more than 100 times larger than the previous figure.

DESNZ stated that data center emissions are reflected in its own model and are included in carbon budget 7, and explained that the AI Energy Council is reviewing ways to invest in clean power for data centers.