Published: October 31, 2025 at 12:23 pm
The recent announcement of a £150 billion UK–US ‘Tech Prosperity Deal’ marks a bold step in transatlantic cooperation on AI, digital infrastructure and high-growth industries. But the deal risks overlooking one fundamental fact: technology doesn’t prosper without power.
The UK’s data centres currently consume approximately 2.5% of the national electricity supply, a figure comparable to the power needs of the entire city of Birmingham.
Projections from parliamentary analysis indicate a potential quadrupling of this electricity usage to over 22 terawatt-hours annually by 2030. Concurrently, the International Energy Agency has issued a warning that AI-driven workloads could account for more than 20% of the additional electricity demand in developed economies by the close of this decade.
Data centres are the backbone of digital growth — but without clean, affordable, and resilient energy, they risk becoming the Achilles’ heel of national competitiveness.