A couple of days ago I wrote about Britain patting itself on the back for “winning” billions in AI investment, when in reality we’re just playing landlord to America’s oligarchs. That was the sovereignty and jobs angle. But there’s another, quieter scandal lurking under the gloss - energy.
Every new AI data centre is a beast. Satya Nadella himself admits the energy use is “very high.” The truth is, these facilities will consume as much electricity as a medium-sized town. And here’s the con: there’s no requirement for Microsoft, Google or Nvidia to build the renewable power that keeps their servers cool. They plug straight into our already stretched grid – and who pays for the upgrades, the balancing, the imports when the wind isn’t blowing? You do.
We’ve heard this story before. They call it “foreign investment,” but what it really means is the public subsidising private gain. Tax breaks for the corporations at one end, higher bills for households at the other. If they want to rent our land for a data-hungry system, then they should be compelled to invest in the renewable infrastructure to feed it. Build the solar, build the wind, build the storage. Otherwise it’s just another extraction industry, only this time the ore is electricity and the mine is your wallet.
GDP numbers will get trotted out, but GDP is meaningless when it’s funnelled to the few. The AI titans get the profit, and Britain gets the power bill. Unless government demands a quid pro quo, this “Tech Prosperity Deal” is nothing more than a giant meter running in America’s favour.
And here’s the sting in the tail – by letting them gorge on our grid without matching it with renewables, we entrench fossil fuels right at the moment we need to break free of them. Energy security doesn’t come from importing more gas, it comes from owning the wind and sun above our own heads. But this deal risks locking us into yesterday’s energy, just to power tomorrow’s machines.
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