PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(13 July 2026)

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what comparative assessment his Department has made of the computational and energy requirements of (a) the machine learning and optimisation techniques used for electricity network management and (b) large language models.

Asked by:
Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat)

Machine learning is not currently used for electricity grid management. Any future energy required will depend on how machine learning will be used.

The UK Government contracted Europe Economics to research whether future electricity demand from AI data centres will add to overall UK energy demand, or whether it will replace electricity currently used elsewhere in the economy (Europe Economics study). We have also recently procured a follow-up study in order to extend the methodology from the Europe Economics work to further 10 use cases.

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