As the UK government’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology announce a new AI Growth Zone, the UK’s leading tech trade body has slammed the government for failing to address prohibitive energy costs.

DSIT announced this week that North Wales would be the location of its newest AI Growth Zone which will see the region receive targeted funding and support to fuel the infrastructure needed to grow its AI sector.

Zones have continued to pop up across the UK, with previous locations including in Scotland, the North East, and Oxfordshire.

However, UK tech trade body TechUK has criticised the government’s most recent zone appointment over failures to address the energy costs associated with AI infrastructure.

“techUK is fully supportive of the government’s AI ambitions but today’s announcement doesn’t go far enough to address the industry’s concerns,” Julian David OBE, CEO of techUK said.

“The UK has the highest industrial energy prices in Europe, a lengthy wait for access to the UK power grid, and planning system delays. These issues are major blockers to significant digital infrastructure investment and risk holding the UK back.

“We must find solutions to these systemic issues that balance attracting investment for our AI infrastructure and lowering costs for the sector at large.”

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These critiques are not unfounded – AI is incredibly energy hungry, and the UK’s energy infrastructure requires major updates to support its population and data centre demands. The energy grid requires updates to meet this growing demand, with the National Grid even turning to AI systems to improve the energy use of AI data centres.

Still, the UN is urging AI and data centre investments to only use renewable energy sources to power data centres in an effort to reduce carbon emissions and slow our acceleration toward catastrophic climate change.

The UK government is also turning to AI to try and improve energy costs across the UK.  Ushering in an era of sovereign renewable power is appealing politically and economically, but takes time and infrastructure to create and sustain.

While the government appointed the AI growth zone in North Wales, it also said the region would host the UK’s first small modular reactors, representing another instance of the UK turning to nuclear as a ‘clean’ power option.

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