LIVERPOOL – The think tank led by former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has hosted a number of events sponsored by Trump-donating tech firms at this year’s party conference.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) has hosted panels featuring, and sponsored by, big tech companies that are driving a dramatic expansion of fossil fuel production in order to power their energy intensive data centres.

The TBI hosted two events sponsored by Google DeepMind – the tech giant’s artificial intelligence (AI) research lab – and featuring its senior director Owen Larter.

One of these sessions, on how AI can “transform the state”, featured Michael Gove, the editor of the right-wing Spectator magazine and a former Conservative Cabinet minister.

Gove stated during the event that Blair should be appointed to the Cabinet in order to oversee the integration of AI into public services. Gove also stated that, if the UK tries to resist the mass deployment of AI, we will find ourselves “in the position that Japan was in for 1850: feudal, backward, overtaken, incapable of feeding or protecting your people”.

The TBI hosted an “in conversation” discussion with the Labour government’s AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, sponsored by ChatGPT creator OpenAI. It also held a private reception with the tech giant, attended by Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden and Trade Minister Lord Anas Sarwar.

Google last year ditched its goal to “pursue net-zero emissions” across all operations by 2030 and has been forging partnerships with fossil fuel companies to power its data centres – including hooking up to a giant new gas plant in Texas that is expected to emit more emissions than the city of San Francisco.

According to an analysis by the Financial Times’ specialist news site Sustainable Views, 56 percent of Google’s U.S. data centres were powered by fossil fuels in 2025, matched by 64 percent of OpenAI’s data centres in the country.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been promoting the mass rollout of data centres powered by fossil fuels, while some of his biggest political donors are drawn from the tech and oil industries. Last year, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, gave a combined $25 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump campaign fund. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, gave $1 million to Trump’s second term inauguration ceremony – the same amount donated by Google.

During the panel featuring Gove, Martha Dacombe of the Centre for British Progress think tank suggested that the UK would and should become reliant on U.S. tech giants. “The only reasonable way we remain competitive is if we tie ourselves to the Americans,” she said – adding that we should operate under the “American AI umbrella”.

The TBI has received extensive funding from big tech interests. The group received £96.5 million between 2021 and 2023 from billionaire tech entrepreneur Larry Ellison, founder of data software company Oracle. In total, Ellison has donated or pledged at least £257 million to the TBI.

Democracy for Sale also recently revealed that the TBI runs a $25,000 (£18,900) a year corporate network that provides access to politicians. The think tank also reportedly charges larger undisclosed fees for higher tiers of membership and claims it can “give your business a greater role in shaping and informing the debates most relevant to you”.

According to Democracy for Sale, members include the fossil fuel giant BP, as well as the big tech firms Amazon and Microsoft.

Blair himself has been one of the foremost promoters of AI, recently warning governments against bowing to a growing “techlash”, and claiming that countries cannot “protect themselves from AI by ignoring it”.

He has also argued for the UK to exploit North Sea fossil fuel reserves and “prioritise cheaper energy over net zero” in part to power AI.

There is mounting opposition to AI due to the vast emissions produced by data centres, their effects on local communities and resources, and warnings that AI may wipe out jobs – and potentially the entire human race.

However, at the TBI events, these issues were marginal to the discussions – with speakers predicting that AI will “build the next industrial revolution”, create jobs, and transform public services. Larter even claimed that data centres will “drive the transition to a cleaner energy grid”.

It was revealed in April that the UK government had underestimated data centre emissions by a factor of 100. The government now admits that they could produce up to 123 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the UK – about as much as generated by 2.7 million people – over the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, the trade body Water UK has warned that the country doesn’t have enough water to supply this burgeoning industry.

A query in ChatGPT requires about 10 times the computing power of a standard Google search, while vast quantities of water are required to cool the servers that power this technology.

The UK government has not yet stated whether it will allow UK data centres to be run on fossil fuels. However, in March, it gave the go-ahead for a data centre campus in Wapsys Wood, Buckinghamshire, which is set to be powered by a 300-megawatt gas microgrid, to apply for planning permission as nationally significant infrastructure – bypassing local planning rules.

Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour also agreed a £31 billion ‘Tech Prosperity Deal’ with Trump last September. While the U.S. paused the deal a few months later, it’s unclear to what extent the AI investments associated with this agreement are also on pause.

The TBI was approached for comment.