Power chief warns 'diseased' policy threatens AI data centre plans

The head of Europe’s main electricity industry body hit out at a “diseased” policy process that could prevent the continent supplying enough power for AI data centres.

Kristian Ruby, secretary general of Eurelectric, said data centres represent a massive opportunity for Europe's economy but warned delays in permitting of projects and securing grid connections mean the region could see locations such as Saudi Arabia hosting the facilities that will crunch Europeans’ own data.

Eurelectric, which lobbies on behalf of utilities and other power sector players, released new estimates that in the EU plus UK, AI-fuelled data centre demand will reach at least 150TWh by 2030, almost triple 2022’s level, with highest scenarios soaring as high as 275TWh.

“Five years from now, it is very likely that we're going to add another country to the EU in terms of power demand coming from data centres. Whether it's going to be a big country like Poland or a very big country like Spain, we don't know,” said Ruby.

“You might wonder why it is that [in] this hyper-advanced society… getting the sort of bureaucratic permit to build something will take you 10 years. This is not an engineering challenge as such,” according to Ruby, who cited China’s ability to build 100GW of solar “in a month”.

“It is a challenge of a political system that is suffering from some sort of disease of self-imposed syndromes.

“If we take seriously the task of deregulating here and making things simpler and easier to do, I think a lot could be done,” claimed Ruby, adding that “we're really bogged down in this kind of endless permitting delay economy”.

Eurelectric pointed to “significant stress” on grids in key data locations such as Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt.

The EU and UK are both developing policy strategies they hope can balance the need to give data centres the energy they need while addressing concerns over their cost and environmental impacts on wider power systems.

Unless the current situation changes, Ruby warned Europe could lose out to markets such as Saudi Arabia that are “next door” in data industry terms.

“We should make sure that we host as much of the data [as possible], especially that pertains to European citizens, in Europe…

“If we don't build data centres in Europe, there's no technical problem in terms of having all the data in Saudi Arabia. But I would rather that we have the data centres here, that we have the demand for the electricity here and that we have jurisdiction over our data.”

Ruby went on: “You can put up a lot in the time frame of five years. You also need to bag it up and balance it. That's the other piece of that equation. But we're not scared of the volumes of energy needed.

“We are concerned over the permitting delays we'll be facing, the grid access issues that we will be dealing with, and the ability to be allowed to build out our system fast enough to meet those new sources of demand.”