UK Data Centre Power Supplier Accused of Giving ‘Lifeline’ to Fossil Fuel Industry

A UK company is selling its wares as a “sustainable power solution” to data centres, DeSmog can reveal, and is pressuring the government to embrace gas-powered artificial intelligence (AI) with “flawed” carbon capture technology.

AVK-SEG (AVK) claims to be the “largest and fastest-growing supplier of innovative power solutions for data centres” across the UK and Europe. Data centres are vast warehouses of servers that power AI systems and demand huge quantities of energy and water.

The firm is behind Europe’s first data centre powered by its own natural gas-powered microgrid – essentially a private fossil fuel power plant run on polluting gas turbines and generators. The Dublin computing complex, owned by data centre operator Pure DC, revved up its operations in March and consumes 90 megawatts of electricity – enough gas to power 100,000 Irish homes.

AVK is also piloting two gas microgrids paired with carbon capture technology to power data centres in the north of England. Despite the heavy criticism of this technology by scientific and climate experts, AVK has said it hopes its carbon capture schemes will become the blueprint for it to fuel the AI boom throughout the UK and Europe.

The firm is likely to find ample interest from tech companies in Europe. Across the UK, data centre operators are already clambering to hook up to existing gas infrastructure in order to power their AI servers. Future Energy Networks, a trade association representing suppliers of natural gas, told The Guardian in May that it has fielded “more than 100” gas connection requests since 2024.

Despite embracing gas-powered microgrids, AVK says its systems are “sustainable,” “low-carbon” and a step on “the road to net zero data”.

Ben Pritchard, the CEO of AVK, personally urged Labour’s then-net zero secretary Ed Miliband to embrace microgrids for AI at the Welsh Labour gala dinner last November, according to a company LinkedIn post. 

The firm has also paid for adverts in the parliamentary affairs magazine, The House, claiming that the UK must “align net zero, digital growth and energy security” and that the “technologies already exist” to deliver both AI growth and meet climate targets.

However, powering AI with gas is set to obliterate net zero targets across Europe. The UK government underestimated the carbon emissions of data centres by a factor of more than 100, and its revised figures predict 123 million tonnes of CO2 resulting from these AI factories by 2035 – more than the Netherlands emitted in 2024. 

The situation is also acute in the EU where, according to projections by the Kiel Institute, the bloc’s AI ambitions could demand up to 168 terawatt-hours of power by 2030 – equivalent to Poland’s annual energy consumption.

“Decision makers need to recognise glossy marketing campaigns and slick lobbying efforts for what they are,” said Oliver Hayes, head of campaigns at Global Action Plan, “PR by a gas industry for whom the AI data centre boom is a golden goose.”

AVK told DeSmog: “If there is a route to meeting the world’s demand for data and AI, while honouring electrification and net zero targets, and one which does not involve a transitional role for gas, we are yet to find it.”

Carbon Capture for Data Centres

Carbon capture technology has been criticised as an unproven climate solution promoted by the fossil fuel industry in order to maintain business as usual.

And there are fears that the technology will be used to justify the mass deployment of fossil fuels to power data centres.

“Carbon capture and storage is fundamentally flawed, extremely expensive, and has a long history of spectacular failure,” said Aled Dilwyn Fisher, senior research campaigner at fossil fuel accountability organisation Oil Change International.

“AVK’s particular push is a perfect storm of fossil-fuelled delusion,” which is “inflating oil, gas, and tech profits for an elite few,” he told DeSmog.

According to Project Drawdown, an expert-led repository that evaluates claims about climate change solutions, “despite 30 years of pilot and commercial projects, most power plant [carbon capture and storage] projects have failed”.

It adds that the “large-scale deployment” of carbon capture on fossil-fuelled power plants “will likely drive continued production and use of coal and gas.”

The industry appears to acknowledge these facts, even as it continues to push the technology. According to reporting from Drilled and Vox, fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil and Shell know that carbon capture is not an effective solution for addressing fossil fuel emissions at scale – despite them touting it as “essential”.

After DeSmog approached AVK for comment, the firm published a page on its website claiming that it is selling the captured carbon dioxide from its first gas-powered microgrid scheme to the food industry for use in products such as soda. AVK says this demonstrates that the emissions of its gas microgrids, if captured, “can be monetised rather than released, not only benefitting the environment but also providing measurable financial value”.

Steve Smith, an associate professor of greenhouse gas removal at the University of Oxford, reviewed these claims and told DeSmog that, rather than decarbonising microgrids, AVK’s pilot “will still cause climate change,” as the carbon dioxide it captures to sell for food production “ultimately ends up in the atmosphere” when people consume the products.

AVK told DeSmog that the company has “not yet delivered a carbon capture scheme” of its own but that its “believe[s] in the power of the technology”.

AVK’s sustainability pledges, including plans to reach net zero by 2050, state that the firm will be “protecting nature, advancing sustainability” and working towards a “cleaner net-zero future”. AVK’s sustainability lead, Sarah Ryan, previously worked for fossil fuel giant BP on carbon capture and hydrogen projects. AVK has thus far not produced firm emissions targets. 

However, the firm has produced in-house research that attempts to suggest that gas-powered AI is more sustainable than data centres run entirely on renewable energy.

These conclusions were disputed by several experts consulted by DeSmog.

“AI data centres are the latest, and perhaps most dangerous and absurd, lifeline to the fossil fuel industry,” warned Fisher of Oil Change International. “They are used to justify a new wave of fossil fuel expansion, with false solutions like carbon capture and storage providing an all-too-familiar alibi.”

UK Gas Uncertainty

Donald Trump’s U.S. administration has promoted the deployment of fossil fuels to power data centres, a policy followed by the country’s big tech industry.

WIRED reported in April that 11 new gas-fired data centre projects in the U.S. could potentially emit 129 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – equivalent to the emissions produced by Morocco in 2024.

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 those run by OpenAI – the company behind ChatGPT. Google has even hooked up to a giant new gas plant in Texas that is expected to emit more emissions than the city of San Francisco.

Now, the big tech industry is pressuring European countries to follow suit.

This includes the UK, where there are growing signs that the government will approve gas-powered data centres.

In March, it gave the go-ahead for a data centre campus in Wapsys Wood, Buckinghamshire, set to be powered by a 300 megawatt gas microgrid, to apply for planning permission as nationally significant infrastructure – bypassing local planning rules.

The developer of the project, SDC, claims the gas microgrid would be “decarbonisation-ready,” with “hydrogen conversion” as its “preferred… readiness solution” – another technology that has proven highly controversial.

The government has given similar approval for a planning application to a gas-powered data centre project in Quest Park, Bedfordshire. When fully operational, the Wapsys Wood and Quest Park projects combined would have a carbon footprint exceeding the total carbon emissions of ExxonMobil’s UK operations in 2023, according to the tech watchdog Foxglove.

There is also growing public acrimony about the mass rollout of energy-intensive data centres. Plans for a data centre to be built in Brick Lane, London, likely to service capital’s financial district, have faced an intense backlash from locals, as have several other schemes across the country.

Some data centres demand vast amounts of water, and there have been warnings from industry bodies that the UK simply does not have enough water to power its burgeoning data centre industry.

There have also been multiple warnings from AI industry researchers and pioneers that the technology may eliminate humankind within the next decade.