Keir Starmer’s grand AI ambitions won’t get anywhere until Britain brings down its sky high energy costs
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THE acronym AI used to be associated not with Artificial Intelligence but with men in boiler suits driving around farms artificially inseminating cattle. How appropriate, given that the Government’s sudden enthusiasm for AI looks to be a load of old bull.
![[Illustration of a semiconductor circuit board with data flowing.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/semiconductor-circuit-board-data-flowing-963530683.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
According to Keir Starmer, launching his AI Opportunities Action Plan yesterday, Britain is going to be transformed into an “AI superpower”. We are going to have “AI growth zones” and government-funded super computers. Unfortunately, Starmer doesn’t seem to have noticed his government is simultaneously undermining the very industry he is trying to promote.
AI has a huge appetite for energy, thanks to the vast number of computations which have to be performed rapidly. According to the International Energy Agency, AI, cryptocurrency and data centres between them accounted for two per cent of global energy demand in 2022 — about as much as is consumed by Germany or Brazil.
![[Ed Milliband arriving at Downing Street for a Cabinet meeting.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/energy-secretary-ed-milliband-arrives-954127464.jpg?strip=all&w=641)
To train a single AI model uses as much energy as 100 US homes in a year. Why, then, would anyone running an AI business favour Britain, which currently has the highest commercial electricity prices in the world?. In 2023, commercial customers were paying an average of 25.85p per kilowatt-hour for their electricity, compared with the equivalent of 17.71p in Germany and just 6.48p in the US.
That is a vast saving if you are running an AI business. High energy prices have already helped kill off much of our manufacturing industry. They are contributing to the demise of the chemical industry, which Ineos chief Jim Ratcliffe warned yesterday is unlikely to survive in Britain.
