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Written question asked by Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 13 July 2026, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 15 July 2026. It was answered by Martin McCluskey (Labour) on Tuesday, 21 July 2026 on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Energy: Artificial Intelligence

Question

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.

Answer

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.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
18224
Session
2026-27
Subjects
Energy Artificial intelligence
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk