{"id":564982,"date":"2025-11-12T04:15:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T04:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/564982\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T04:15:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T04:15:24","slug":"planning-power-and-politics-threaten-britains-ai-dreams-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/564982\/","title":{"rendered":"Planning, power and politics threaten Britain\u2019s AI dreams \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One has already been announced in Northumberland, but a\u00a0decision on a\u00a0second, planned for Teesside in north-east England,\u00a0has\u00a0been <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.politico.eu\/news\/207520\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">delayed until the end of this year<\/a> by Miliband, whose department has to make a call on whether to greenlight plans for a hydrogen plant on the same site, which could preclude data centers being built there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a large fight going on inside of government where Ed Miliband seems to have set himself up against not just the prime minister, but a number of secretaries of state,\u201d Houchen\u00a0told POLITICO during\u00a0Conservative\u00a0Party Conference in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The nuclear option<\/p>\n<p>Long term, the government is\u00a0betting on\u00a0a\u00a0cleaner, but more expensive energy source\u00a0\u2014\u00a0nuclear,\u00a0specifically\u00a0small modular reactors.\u00a0Michael Jenner, CEO of\u00a0nuclear firm\u00a0Last Energy UK,\u00a0said they\u00a0had received\u00a0dozens of enquiries\u00a0from data center builders and\u00a0argued\u00a0that the green\u00a0credentials of\u00a0nuclear\u00a0was an ace card it could play against rival bids from gas\u00a0companies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf\u00a0you&#8217;re\u00a0thinking about building data\u00a0centers\u00a0in South Wales, which a lot of people are, you have a problem with the authorities because they\u00a0don&#8217;t\u00a0want new gas there,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In September, EDF Energy announced plans to work with American company\u00a0Holtec\u00a0International building a crop of data centers next to small modular nuclear reactors at a disused coal plant in Nottinghamshire.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Tony Blair Institute, which is influential with government ministers,\u00a0has argued\u00a0nuclear\u00a0has a \u201cunique\u201d advantage when it comes to data centers. It\u00a0also\u00a0believes the country\u00a0should scale back its net zero\u00a0plans\u00a0in favor of reducing energy costs to attract data center investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCheap, firm power is &#8230;\u00a0not a &#8216;nice to have&#8217; but a prerequisite for attracting AI-driven growth,\u201d\u00a0it argued\u00a0in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/institute.global\/insights\/climate-and-energy\/cheaper-power-2030-net-zero-2050-resetting-UK-electricity-strategy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a report last month<\/a>.\u00a0Gas, meanwhile,\u00a0should be part of that\u00a0energy\u00a0mix,\u00a0the\u00a0Institute\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/institute.global\/insights\/tech-and-digitalisation\/sovereignty-security-scale-a-uk-strategy-for-ai-infrastructure\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recommended in July.<\/a>\u00a0Firms represented at the AI Energy Council have urged ministers to green-light greater use of gas turbines in the short term.<\/p>\n<p>The clock is ticking. Gas, nuclear, renewables or even wooden pellets \u2014 ministers willing on an AI revolution need to make\u00a0decisions\u00a0fast.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One has already been announced in Northumberland, but a\u00a0decision on a\u00a0second, planned for Teesside in north-east England,\u00a0has\u00a0been delayed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[7960,84697,748,1194,3854,2814,32054,17790,1312,5398,35,393,4884,1195,6084,1197,105581,2441,3739,1144,1303,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-564982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-big-data","10":"tag-biomass","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-budget","13":"tag-coal","14":"tag-data","15":"tag-data-centers","16":"tag-ed-miliband","17":"tag-electricity","18":"tag-emissions","19":"tag-energy","20":"tag-england","21":"tag-great-britain","22":"tag-growth","23":"tag-infrastructure","24":"tag-investment","25":"tag-liz-kendall","26":"tag-markets","27":"tag-net-zero","28":"tag-northern-ireland","29":"tag-nuclear-power","30":"tag-scotland","31":"tag-uk","32":"tag-united-kingdom","33":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115534792236763904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}