As the UK and EU debate how to source the vast quantities of electricity they’ll need to power their grand visions of home-grown artificial intelligence (AI), the gas turbine sector is confident that governments will soon follow the lead of the United States – by clearing the way for Big Tech to embrace natural gas.
“Sooner or later there will be a wake-up call for the EU”, said Francesco Ciccola of American gas turbine manufacturer Mitsubishi Power Aero.
DeSmog spoke to Ciccola last month at Datacloud Energy Europe, a tech energy conference dedicated to “defining Europe’s AI power strategy,” held in Brussels, Belgium.
San Francisco-based Global Energy Monitor, a research and advocacy group that tracks global fossil fuel developments tied to data centres, says that Mitsubishi Power Aero is a major provider of turbines for the AI boom in the U.S.
“This new administration in the U.S., they give you a workshop of reality”, said Ciccola, a Europe-based sales director for the manufacturer, which sponsored the conference. “It’s typical, this buffer in time between U.S. and Europe, in everything.”
After the event, Ciccola told DeSmog that “Mitsubishi Power’s mission is to help create a future that works for people and the planet by advancing innovative power solutions that support decarbonization while delivering reliable energy.”
He added: “Any remarks made at Datacloud Energy Europe were intended to describe observed market conditions and customer demand, not to comment on or advocate for any political or regulatory approach.
“Mitsubishi Power Aero operates in full compliance with all applicable permitting, planning, and regulatory requirements in every jurisdiction where we do business. References to differences between markets were descriptive of timing and demand dynamics only.”
Across the U.S., President Donald Trump has championed fossil fuel-powered AI, while tech giants are planning, constructing, and operating their own gargantuan, energy-voracious new AI data center complexes with off-grid gas power plants.
Tech companies including Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, and xAI, are currently planning or building out fleets of gas turbines that will generate at least 23 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, according to an analysis by Cleanview – roughly twice as much as New York City uses.
This American AI construction blitz has come at an enormous cost to the climate, skyrocketing the tech industry’s carbon emissions and pushing one tech giant after another to abandon its climate pledges.
Is it now Europe’s turn?
“I just think the American market is ahead of us [and] the same thing is going to happen here”, said a turbine sales representative from UK-based manufacturer Langley Holdings, which also sponsored the March 25-26 Datacloud conference and primarily sells to the UK. “It just will take a bit longer and it will be a bit harder because more people will be saying, ‘hang on a minute, we don’t want to be burning greenhouse gasses.’”
A sales representative from MWM, the European arm of U.S.-based gas generator manufacturer Caterpillar, who asked not to be identified, told DeSmog that the company – another summit sponsor – is “definitely” confident that gas-powered AI will be coming to the UK.
The representative said MWM is working on “numerous” projects in Europe and the UK, each capable of generating up to 100 megawatts (MW). The projects are “getting more concrete” compared to last year, they said, with “actual projects” materialising in Germany and the UK.
MWM and Langley Holdings were approached for comment.
The Datacloud summit came at a pivotal moment. The EU and UK are due to unveil new regulations that will dictate to what extent new AI data centres can construct off-grid gas plants to power their operations – and as gas turbine manufacturers report global order backlogs running to 2030.
Datacloud’s organisers promised that the summit – which involved tech sector and energy leaders, gas turbine industry representatives, and European politicians – would “influence billions in investment” and “reshape regulatory pathways.”
The result was a fierce two-day debate where high-level decision makers in the world of AI and energy fought over whether data centres in Europe will be rolled out with fossil fuels.
“We have to face the reality – there is a real risk of gasification for data centres,” said MEP Nicolás González Casares, a member of the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research, and Energy. “We cannot gassify this sector. Data centres must become an enabler of the green transition.”
“No planet, no data centre,” said Neal Kalita, senior director of global power and energy at NTT Global Data Centres, the third largest data centre operator in the world. “Being a kind of a continent that develops a digital infrastructure that doesn’t destroy the planet is going to be not just a competitive edge – it’s an imperative.”
Powering Europe’s AI boom with gas, if governments allow it, could decimate net zero goals. A recent analysis by Carbon Brief found that if the UK relies heavily on gas to power data centres, the AI sector would emit 30 metric tonnes of carbon a year by 2035 – as much as the entire country of Denmark. Any increase in emissions will take the UK further away from its goal to cut emissions by 81 percent from 1990 levels by 2035.
The EU’s AI ambitions would demand up to 168 terawatt-hours (TWh) of power by 2030, according to projections by the Kiel Institute – equivalent to what Poland consumes every year. If powered by non-renewables, the report warns, data centres will be putting the EU’s climate goals “at risk.”
Will the gas evangelists win out? Europe is on the cusp of making that decision.
European AI Dash?
Both the UK and the EU have announced plans to triple their AI capacity – in the UK by 2030 and the EU by 2035. The pledges have set off a rush of data centre construction across Europe.
However, years-long wait times to connect new AI data centre projects to electricity grids have pushed many developers to try to skip the queue by requesting direct hookups to gas. In the last year, companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon have pressured the UK government to approve fleets of private gas turbines and generators for their projects in Britain.
In that spirit, off-grid gas-powered data centre projects have begun to crop up across Europe in recent months.
Ireland, which has long embraced data centre development, is emerging as the canary in the coal mine. In 2024, data centres consumed 6,969 gigawatt-hours (GWh), 22 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption. Off-grid gas power is now rolling in to alleviate this energy crunch.
Last month, British off-grid power specialist company AVK, alongside data centre operator Pure Data Centres, announced the completion of the first data centre in Dublin powered by dedicated gas-fired turbines capable of producing 90 MW, enough energy to power 100,000 homes for a year. While AVK says the turbines could theoretically be run on renewable hydro-treated vegetable oil, currently they are running on natural gas as the “primary fuel”. Neither company has given a timeline for the turbines to transition off gas.
Will governments green-light European gas-fired AI projects? Campaigners are concerned about the gas turbine industry’s confidence at this prospect.
“The gas industry evidently sees [European] data centres as a growing market, which is a worrying sign of apparent government apathy towards the climate implications,” said Oliver Hayes, head of big tech at environmental campaign group Global Action Plan. “Using AI as an excuse to breathe new life into destructive oil and gas projects is neither welcome nor wise.”
Gas Powered, Government Approved?
There are indications that Britain may sign on to gas-powered AI, even if it spells calamity for its climate goals.
Future Energy Network, which represents UK pipeline operators, told The Times that seven data centre projects have already been waived through to hook up to the gas grid.
In March, the Labour government gave its approval for a proposed 300 MW gas-powered data centre campus in Wapseys Wood, Buckinghamshire to apply for planning permission as nationally significant infrastructure – which allows projects to bypass the usual local planning requirements.
There are indications that the European public doesn’t support this kind of development. According to an October survey by the campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels, two-thirds of people in the European Union don’t want data centres powered by fossil fuels.
Europeans “do not want to shoulder the costs” of powering data centres, said Jill McArdle, a campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels. She added that the opposition of Americans to sharply rising energy prices “should serve as a warning for Europe.”
“The U.S.-Iran war is exposing European countries’ over-reliance on unstable and expensive foreign imports of fossil fuels”, said McArdle. “Yet Big Tech and the gas [energy equipment] industry are plotting to keep us hooked and grow their profits.”
It may soon become clearer whether EU or UK lawmakers agree. The EU is set to release two new AI regulations in the coming few months: a new law that is expected to include provisions about renewable energy requirements for data centres, and a data centre sustainability rating scheme.
In the UK earlier this year, the Labour government launched an inquiry into the future climate impacts of data centres. Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband has already said these impacts are “inherently uncertain.”
In response to a request for comment, Labour said that its recently-formed AI Energy Council is “exploring opportunities to attract investment and support the development of clean power for data centres”, and that the country’s designation of five “AI Growth Zones” is “driving these partnerships forward.”
This same council pressured the government last year to support off-grid gas for data centres in Britain.
So far, many data centre operators in Europe have avoided reporting their energy usage. A new investigation by Investigate Europe, an independent journalism group, has revealed that U.S. tech companies successfully lobbied the EU two years ago to keep information on the operations of individual data centres secret, including environmental data like energy use and carbon emissions. Only 36 percent of Europe’s data centres submitted any data to a 2025 European Commission report on their energy usage. In the Netherlands, Microsoft and Google have come under fire for failing to report the energy usage of their Dutch data centers to the government.
McArdle said that the UK and EU governments need to intervene to ensure the sector is held to account. “Only regulation and fossil fuel phaseout will protect Europeans from rising energy costs,” she said. “Otherwise, we will pay the price for the reckless profit-making schemes of Big Tech and the gas industry.”