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.”
