The future may look bit uncertain, with technologically-heightened challenges proliferating: for example, there’s the growing impacts of climate change, but also of AI, that now being portrayed as a new existential threat, with calls for a halt or delay in its development- even from the Pope! Quite apart from the local impact of AI/data centres, there are certainly some big issues. Just as there are with climate change. We are struggling to deal with the later- mainly by pushing for renewables. But not everyone agrees.
And it’s the same for AI. For example, in September, addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, US president Donald Trump said we should not to block AI, which he called ‘superintelligence’, adding that the people who warn that it is going to ‘kill us’ are the same ones who warned about global warming. Which evidently, unlike AI, he does not believe in. That is why he is so against renewables and so pro coal. It is good to have it all laid out so clearly, though Trumps approach is very different from that in the EU, where renewables are booming, while AI developments and impacts are being quite carefully monitored and (hopefully) regulated.
While the AI debate rumbles on, renewables are moving ahead fast. For example, at another UN meeting on the same day as Trumps UN presentation, Germany announced that it would be ‘fossil free’ by 2045 and would ramp up renewable energy from 55% to 80% of electricity generation by 2030. And remain nuclear free. The Guardian noted that, ‘the previously target of winding down coal use in the next decade, with a view to an exit from coal in 2038, was also reaffirmed, with the potential for an earlier target of 2035.’
France had earlier committed to be ‘fossil free by 2050’, with coal use gone by 2030, oil by 2045, fossil gas by 2050 - and renewables dramatically capacity expanded. To be fair though, it is still heavily reliant on nuclear from the huge feet it built in the 1970s and there are plans to build some more to replace at least some the old nuclear plants, although so far its new programme has not been a big success. There have been major delays and cost over-runs with the first of the new EPR plants at Flamanville: it’s now running, but it has to close down soon for a year for a costly refit – the reactor lid has to be replaced.
Spain doesn’t have that problem. It’s planning to phase out its old nuclear plants and the latest draft of Spain’s National Integrated Energy & Climate Plan (PNIEC) looks to getting 81% of power generation and 48% of total energy from renewable by 2030. Most other EU countries have similarly large renewable targets. Indeed, Denmark and Portugal already get more than 80% of their power from renewables.
The UK, outside of the EU, is at 52% and has a ‘net zero carbon’ 2050 target, with renewable playing the major role. Some new replacement nuclear is planned, but up to 82% of power is likely to be coming from renewables by 2030. The UKs prospects for reaching its goals depend significantly on the Contracts for Difference (CfD) new renewables support system and specifically on what that means for power costs. According to Business Green, a recent LCP Delta report says the next round CfD round ‘could deliver over £11bn in savings for consumers through to 2050’, with it says up to 19 GW of new capacity expected, which would cut whole-sale power costs by £51bn over 25 years, that only partially being offset by contract payments of £38bn. Good news, if so.
What about AI? Labour has rejected calls from the Green party to pause construction of major AI infrastructure in Britain. The government said the Greens proposal of an ‘AI moratorium’ other than for local-scale datacentres for the local community, ‘would be a disaster for jobs and national security’. But a government spokesperson said that ‘does not mean a blank cheque for big tech or that every datacentre should be approved’. Instead they said developers should ‘prioritise clean power, use water responsibly, create British jobs and supply chains, and provide investment to the communities in which they are built’.
However, the Guardian noted campaign group Foxglove’s view that some datacentre developers were seeking to mitigate long waits to connect to the energy grid by planning their own gas-fired power stations, so there was a risk of a ‘deeply alarming backward step on climate action’, and ‘the public and the planet will be left to foot the bill for the environmental and social costs of these energy-hungry giants’.
The AI debate continues. The prospects for a global moratorium seem limited, although cynically, it might be argued that China may see some advantage in a temporary global slow-down while it catches up with the USA. However, that may not take long. Chinese open-source AI models like DeepSeek provide AI services at a fraction of US costs. And by courting the Global South and accelerating AI international adoption, China is framing AI as accessible rather than a closed corporate asset.
Even so, it is clear that AI may have major social & environmental impacts, as well as potential benefits. Janus like, it can improve energy use efficiency but also use a lot of energy and water. It may replace boring jobs, but also create mass unemployment. It may also lead to the dominance of autonomous machines - beyond human control.
That’s no longer the stuff of science fiction. Soon we may have all-powerful potentially independent-minded, self-willed ‘Artificial General Intelligence’ systems. They will be hungry for energy and cooling and maybe not care if that means human beings and the natural environment suffer, as data centres expand driven by unstoppable system energy demand. Scary stuff. And that’s just a start. But it may be that, in self-regulation mode, the big AI companies will back off a bit- to avoid heavy regulatory controls imposed by national governments, or new global agreements and frameworks, as has been done in relation to climate change. Or will it just be left to markets to drive tech ‘progress’- uncontrolled? As evidently Trump would like. For the moment, it’s all up in the air, but, like climate change the big issues won’t go away, with Bill Gates warning that uncontrolled AI could lead to ‘a billion deaths’. We live in interesting times…
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