Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure connections to the electricity grid are sufficient to attract investment in artificial intelligence data centre infrastructure.

The Government is working with Ofgem and NESO to deliver fundamental reform to the grid connections process. Subject to Ofgem’s final decision this could release over 400GW of capacity from the connection queue, which will accelerate connections for AI data centres.

The Government have also sought expressions of interest to identify promising locations which can benefit overall grid infrastructure whilst still having quick project development times to remain attractive for infrastructure investment.

The Government is also setting up the AI Energy Council, through which senior representatives from both the energy industry and the AI industry will look at where best to locate AI data centres and proactively manage the energy requirements of AI. These efforts work in tandem with the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan.