{"id":21226,"date":"2026-04-24T13:19:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/21226\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T13:19:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:19:19","slug":"uk-quietly-increases-ai-emissions-forecast-100-fold-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/21226\/","title":{"rendered":"UK quietly increases AI emissions forecast 100-fold \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The forecast for water consumption from AI data centers has also been increased, from 1 trillion cubic meters in 2035 to between 0.1\u20130.5 trillion cubic meters each year over the decade.<\/p>\n<p>The revision comes amid heightened scrutiny from MPs and green groups over how the Labour government\u2019s aim to be an \u201cAI maker\u201d aligns with its target of reaching clean power by 2030 and net zero by 2050.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith this quiet release the government has finally admitted that AI data centres are a climate catastrophe, sucking up unbelievable quantities of electricity which would force us to drive new fossil fuel use at the worst possible time,\u201d Tim Bierley, campaign manager at campaign group Global Justice Now, a non-profit campaigning on justice and environmental issues, said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExpansion on this scale will drive a coach and horses through the U.K.\u2019s climate goals and plans for the energy transition \u2014 and all to curry favour with Trump and Silicon Valley. It is extremely risky and it is happening without public consent. This should be a wake-up call.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The government said successfully achieving the government\u2019s clean power target \u201cwould mean emissions from AI compute would be towards the bottom\u201d of the forecast range.<\/p>\n<p>While the government said AI hardware has become more energy efficient and further improvements are likely, emissions will be \u201cdriven by indirect emissions from the power generation supplying and constructing electricity-intensive data centres and largely depends on how quickly the UK decarbonises its energy grid and how fast AI adoption grows.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The forecast for water consumption from AI data centers has also been increased, from 1 trillion cubic meters&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2096,9776,602,2099,3795,234,1426,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-21226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-chi-onwurah","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-data-centers","12":"tag-ed-miliband","13":"tag-energy","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116459887802432002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}