{"id":647671,"date":"2026-06-19T19:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/647671\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T19:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:20:10","slug":"ed-milibands-net-zero-rules-holding-back-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/647671\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Miliband\u2019s net zero rules \u2018holding back AI\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Miliband\u2019s net zero rules<\/a> risk scuppering Britain\u2019s push to become a global leader in artificial intelligence, an industry expert has warned.<\/p>\n

Paul Stein, the chief executive of Floral Energy, which specialises in providing power for data centres, said the Energy Secretary\u2019s restrictions on new gas-fired power stations meant there would not be enough electricity for AI data centres.<\/p>\n

These data centres need vast amounts of power and new plants are the only way Britain can meet that surging demand, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centres need 24\/7 constant energy and that makes intermittent renewables [like wind and solar] plus energy storage currently almost unaffordable,\u201d Mr Stein added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is pointing to off-grid solutions and currently those will have to be gas-powered.\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments follow Mr Miliband\u2019s decision to impose tough rules on all new or refurbished gas-fired power plants, ordering that they be converted to become less polluting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Stein said such options risked making new gas-fired power plants unviable and called instead for emissions controls on data-centre power plants to be lifted.<\/p>\n

Citing government forecasts that AI could add 10pc to GDP, he said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to adopt a digital first strategy in the UK, similar to what has happened in the US. For data centres, that means we have to sweep aside traditional planning and emission regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments reflect a growing concern that Mr Miliband\u2019s net zero ambitions<\/a> and crackdown on fossil fuels are clashing with Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s pledge to make the UK a global leader in AI.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Trump administration pushed through plans in the US to let data centres quickly hook themselves up to the US power transmission grid to accommodate surging demand.<\/p>\n

Venessa Moffat, the head of the UK\u2019s Data Centre Trade Association, backed Mr Stein\u2019s call.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centres place very large and concentrated demands on the grid. Whilst renewable generation will continue to provide an increasing proportion of UK electricity, the system also requires sufficient firm capacity to maintain security of supply during periods of low wind and solar output,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The UK has about 500 data centres with a total capacity of about three gigawatts (GW) \u2013 already equating to the output of the UK\u2019s largest power stations.<\/p>\n

Regulator Ofgem says that around 140 proposed data centre projects in Great Britain are seeking grid connections with a combined demand of about 50 GW of power capacity \u2013 more than the country\u2019s current peak electricity demand of about 45 GW.<\/p>\n

Oliver McHugh, a power and grid specialist at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said that with grid connections taking up to 12 years, many operators were opting to build their own gas-fired power plants alongside their data centres.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cOver 100 applications have been made to connect to the gas grid but whether that translates into built capacity depends heavily on how government regulators approach the air quality and environmental questions that gas-powered generation raises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Bowden, the founder of SQE Energy, which specialises in setting up electricity supplies for large industrial users, said: \u201cPrivate gas plants for data centres should be treated as a last resort, not a default model.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ed Miliband\u2019s net zero rules risk scuppering Britain\u2019s push to become a global leader in artificial intelligence, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,84,2980,9610,1912,5438,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-647671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-companies","tag-ed-miliband","tag-net-zero","tag-standard","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}