One vision of the UK’s future involves a decarbonised economy powered by clean, renewable energy. Another involves making the UK an AI superpower. The government departments responsible for these two visions do not appear to have agreed on their numbers. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) thinks AI datacentres will consume 6GW of electricity by 2030 . The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) appears to think they will use less than a tenth of that. Tim Squirrell, the head of strategy for the NGO Foxglove, said: “The government’s cluelessness over the environmental impact of datacentres would be laughable, if it weren’t so alarming.” Cecilia Rikap, a researcher at University College London, said: “There are two ways to interpret this ‘misalignment’: either DESNZ and DSIT are incompetent, or there’s some kind of magical thinking about AI and big tech.…