Campaign groups warn that the soaring electricity demand from new AI data centres could drive up the UK’s carbon emissions.
In a letter to UK technology secretary Liz Kendall, six non-governmental organisations, including Friends of the Earth and Foxglove, are calling for data centre developers to reveal if their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions.
This comes as the energy regulator Ofgem recently published a consultation to review how new projects are connected to the power grid as the connection queue grows.
Ofgem has seen a surge in demand for connection applications – the total capacity of contracted connection offers rose from about 41GW in November 2024 to around 125 GW by June 2025. For comparison, peak electricity demand in Great Britain on 11 February 2026 was 45GW.
Much of this growth is being driven by proposed new AI data centres. The consultation document revealed that the amount of power being sought by the 140 proposed data centre schemes could require...