Like Harold Wilson and his ill-defined ‘white heat of technology’, Keir Starmer has latched on to artificial intelligence as the saviour which is finally going to jolt Britain’s sluggish economy into growth. He once even suggested it would help fill potholes. A year ago he launched his AI Opportunities Action Plan, which is supposed to give the industry a huge boost through the designation of ‘AI Growth Zones’.

But there is a big hole in Starmer’s plans. How are we going to power an industry that has become as voracious in its energy needs as the steel, shipbuilding and other heavy industries which it might one day replace?

The high energy consumption of AI might not seem obvious to anyone playing around with ChatGPT. It all seems so clean and modern. Indeed, until a decade ago, energy consumption wasn’t really a big factor in the evolution of tech. Computing power increased dramatically, and the internet grew ever bigger, yet energy efficiency was able to keep up with it, with the result that the total energy consumption of the sector was largely flat. At the turn of the century, you may have had a desktop computer with a large and noisy fan trying to keep the components cool. Now you probably have a quiet, slim laptop which can do far more processing while generating far less heat.

In the past few years, that has all begun to change dramatically as the sophistication of AI models runs far ahead of efforts to reduce their power needs. Last year, a study published in the MIT........

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