How Britain’s Net Zero obsession could kill our AI industry.
A thread 🧵
(with thanks to @LoftusSteve)
Amazon is dropping $20bn on an AI mega-campus in Pennsylvania.
Meta’s building a $10bn site in Louisiana — backed by 2+ GW of gas plants.
China is wiring entire regions with coal, hydro, and nuclear.
That’s how you power AI.
Meanwhile in Britain?
We’re still arguing about newts.
Labour’s Planning Bill - one of its flagship promises - is bogged down in rows with the “vegetable lobby” instead of delivering energy security.
Here’s the reality:
Data centres aren’t warehouses.
They’re the factories of the digital age — running AI models, Netflix, even NHS records.
And they eat power.
By 2030, global data centres will consume nearly 1,000 TWh of electricity annually.
That’s 3× the UK’s total demand.
Pretend this is optional and you’re volunteering Britain for obscurity.
The US and China understand this.
They guarantee firm, dispatchable power:
America: new gas turbines alongside AI campuses.
China: “all of the above” — coal, hydro, nuclear, solar.
Britain’s approach?
Housing & data centres told to wait until 2035 for grid connections.
Microsoft threatening to pull UK investment.
Paying billions to keep backup gas on standby.
All while pretending wind + solar can do it alone.
And here’s the kicker: our 2nd-biggest renewable is still biomass.
We burn Canadian wood pellets at Drax that emit 2–3× more CO₂ than gas at the stack.
But on paper, it’s “green.”
Britain makes up <1% of global CO₂.
China’s 2023 emissions increase was bigger than our entire annual footprint.
So kneecapping growth here won’t move the climate needle. It just kills jobs & tech.
We share the same North Sea gas fields as Norway.
They drill it, sell it back to us, and call it profit. We refuse to drill - and call it virtue.
That’s not Net Zero. That’s Net Stupid.
Wind is Britain’s great illusion. On paper we’ve got gigawatts.
In reality, only 8–13% can be counted on at peak demand.
Build 10 GW of turbines → you still need ~9 GW of backup. That’s not reliability. That’s roulette.
And the "Capacity Market" is infuriating.
We now spend a fortune paying gas plants just to sit on standby because wind & solar can’t guarantee supply.
Want AI infrastructure & sovereign cloud? Then get serious:
⚛ Nuclear, fast.
⛽ North Sea gas as a bridge.
⚡ A grid built at wartime speed.
🪫 Stop lying about wind, solar & biomass.
I've made a video about all of this here:
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.