Real Impact or Easy Scapegoats?

Published in August 2025, the report Impact of growth of data centres on energy consumption, commissioned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and authored by Europe Economics, examines how the growth of digital services, and the data centres that support them, affect energy consumption in the UK.

The report’s central premise is that while digitalisation introduces new electricity demand, it can also displace energy-intensive physical activities. The report focuses on three use cases, including comparing AI-powered translation with human translation.

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