Lowdown tracks these figures as they change. There is a note at the end on how many people get their news from AI.
Energy
Many headline numbers are connection queues. A queue counts capacity someone has asked the grid for, not electricity used, and many requests will never be built. Britain’s data-centre queue was about 50 GW across roughly 140 sites in February, against a national peak of 45 GW on 11 February 2026.
Finland’s grid operator, Fingrid, warned that 5 GW of connections already signed may never be built. Denmark has about 60 GW of requests against a peak near 7 GW.
Ireland has a real measurement. Data centres used 23% of its metered electricity in 2025, up from 5% in 2015.
In September, Texas, Scotland and Ireland pushed back. Texas halted every data-centre environmental permit on 21 September; its grid queue is 438 GW, about 90% of it data centres (Lowdown on Texas). In Scotland, a ministerial Direction holds data-centre planning decisions until national guidance arrives, and the Scottish Parliament backed a pause by 80 votes to 26 (Lowdown on Holyrood). Ireland’s planning appeals board refused a €1.5bn data centre in County Mayo that had no fixed grid connection and no renewable power contract (Lowdown on Mayo).
Coverage of OpenAI pausing Stargate UK put it down to regulation and to UK industrial electricity, at more than four times the price in the US and some Nordic countries.
Lowdown follows it in Data Centres: Boom and Backlash, including Fingrid’s warning and Ofgem’s proposed fee for a place in the queue.
Scroll sideways for the source links.
| Figure | What it means | Source link |
|---|---|---|
| About 50 GW across roughly 140 sites; 45 GW peak | Britain’s data-centre queue compared with peak demand on 11 February 2026. That day’s peak is a reference point, not an all-time record. | The Register, citing NESO and Ofgem |
| 41 GW to 125 GW; at least 80 GW from data centres | Britain’s wider demand-connection queue by Ofgem’s figures, November 2024 to June 2025. Lowdown could not reproduce 125 GW from NESO’s register in September. | Ofgem, dated comparison, Lowdown’s check |
| £237,500 to £712,500 per MW | Ofgem’s proposed commitment fee on accepting a connection offer. The proposal refunds it at energisation and forfeits it on early exit. | Ofgem’s consultation announcement |
| More than 4 times | Reported UK industrial electricity prices against the US and named Nordic countries, in coverage of OpenAI’s Stargate UK pause. Regulation also mattered. | The Next Web |
| Slough: up to 35 data centres | Slough’s cluster faces grid constraints. | Slough reporting |
| Blyth: £10 billion planned | Blackstone’s proposed QTS campus near Blyth received outline planning permission. | Blyth planning report |
| Ireland: 5% to 23% | Data centres’ share of metered electricity rose between 2015 and 2025. This measures electricity consumed, unlike a connection queue. | Central Statistics Office |
| Denmark: about 60 GW against roughly 7 GW | Requested new demand compared with national peak demand. Energinet describes the pressure on grid expansion and warns that many projects may never materialise. | Energinet’s own explanation |
Water
Water is a local problem. A company’s total across all its sites says little; one evaporatively cooled site can become the biggest customer of a small, stressed water system. Withdrawal is water taken from a source, and consumption is the part not returned, mostly because it evaporates.
Local figures often stay private. The Dalles, in Oregon, only published Google’s share of its water, 29% in 2021, after the city settled its lawsuit against journalists. Some governments have legislated. Virginia now makes utilities report data-centre water sales separately (Lowdown on Virginia), and Brazil has written a water cap into law: its new data-centre tax break limits claimants to 0.05 litres per kilowatt-hour (Lowdown on Brazil).
Operators say cooling design changes the demand. Google says its Mesa site in Arizona uses air cooling, and a 300 MW operator in Johor says it runs on treated wastewater (Lowdown on Johor).
Scroll sideways for the source links.
| Figure or record | What it means locally | Source link |
|---|---|---|
| London and Slough: drought investigation in 2022 | Thames Water examined data-centre demand and alternatives to drinking water. The report establishes the investigation, without quantifying a resulting shortage. | Thames Water reporting |
| The Dalles: 29% in 2021 | Google’s data centres accounted for this share of the city’s water consumption. Records became public after the city settled its lawsuit against journalists. | Released water records, reported by DCD |
| Google: about 23 billion litres in 2023 | Reported consumption across Google’s data centres. This fleet total cannot identify the pressure on an individual water supply. | Google’s environmental report |
| Newton County: 1 million US gallons daily in 2030 | Appendix A projects this combined demand for Meta’s two developments. The document also models lower demand; these are forecasts, not measured use. | County water analysis |
| Mesa: air cooling | Google says its Arizona facility uses air cooling. Local design changes the demand, even where the surrounding region faces water stress. | Google’s Mesa account |
Neighbours of Meta’s planned sites in Newton County, Georgia, have reported well problems. The county’s study has no baseline for them, so the cause is still disputed in the reporting on the complaints.
Jobs
Company statements and labour data measure different things. Companies that cut staff disagree about whether AI was the reason. Microsoft cut 4,800 and denied AI did it. Goldman cut 2% on record revenue and refused the AI excuse. Wells Fargo cut too, and named AI as the reason.
The New York Fed found adoption rising while sackings stayed rare. In a survey of 1,000 US hiring managers, 59% said they emphasised AI when explaining freezes or layoffs, but only 9% said AI had fully replaced roles. New York’s layoff notices covered 162 employers and nearly 28,300 workers, and none named AI as a cause, WIRED reported on 9 February 2026. A Federal Reserve comparison of late-2025 surveys put adoption at about 18% of firms and 41% of workers.
Giant Robots discussed this in episode 606, “AI layoffs are BS”.
More in AI: Jobs, Power & Money.
News
How many people get their news from AI depends on the measure. Ofcom found that 21% of UK adults used an AI service for news in the past month, and 13% used ChatGPT. The Reuters Institute asked about weekly use of AI chatbots for news in 2025 and found 3% in the UK.