L

Lord Whitehead (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 March 2026

Debate

Carbon Budget 6

Contribution

In terms of the Government’s clean power 2030 plans, pretty much only low-carbon power will be used for operations in the future. As far as data centres are concerned, this is one of the real-world trends that I mentioned has been analysed out in the carbon budget considerations. While AI will certainly considerably reduce the amount of electricity that is being used, the overall trend towards a large number of data centres will increase its use, so you have trends going in either direction. However, that is within the modelling that has been done so that we can consider how the budget can be met. On grid connections, among other things, Ofgem is very much under way in reducing the number of people in the queue and making sure that the grid is far better able to accommodate the early connections and consequences of the rollout of new grid bootstraps, for example.

More from Lord Whitehead (Lab)

Other recent Hansard contributions by the same speaker.

About Hansard

Hansard is the official verbatim record of proceedings in the UK Parliament. Every word spoken in the Commons and Lords is recorded and published — this page is a single contribution from that record.

Partner sites