Brussels 'intensively' looking to start talks on EU-UK security pact
The European Commission is 'intensively' trying to get member states to give it a mandate to negotiate a security and defence partnership with the United Kingdom, a top EU official said on Monday.
Negotiating such a partnership requires the unanimous approval of all 27 member states, but some countries, like France, have already signalled they want any security pact to be included in a wider reset in relations, seemingly returning to the Brexit mantra that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'.
For the EU's external action service (EEAS), increased cooperation on security and defence with the UK 'is a must' because the current geopolitical context is 'dramatically' different from when the two sides struck the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) that lays out the terms of their relationship, its Managing Director for Europe, Matti Maasikas, told lawmakers on Monday.
'What could we do more? This being the EU you need the legal framework, you need legal basis to do things and since the foreign policy declaration was left out of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, we need to find new ways and a new basis for our cooperation,' Maasikas told lawmakers from Brussels and London gathered at the European Parliament for an EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly.
'The Security and defence partnership could be one of those instruments, should be if you ask me, if you ask the High Representative.'
'For that, the High Representative needs the mandate from the EU Council, meaning the consent of all member states, the discussions are intensively ongoing to obtain this mandate,' he added.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who came to power last summer, has been pushing for a security and defence pact which he said last month should focus on research and development, military mobility across Europe, greater cooperation on missions and operations, and industrial collaboration.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, Britain's minister for EU relations, told the same joint parliamentary assembly on Monday that the UK is 'ready to negotiate' while Catriona Mace, the foreign and development policy director at the UK Mission to the EU, said that 'the status quo should not be the extent of our ambition'.
'We already work closely on our collective security,' she said. 'We must do more together.'
Donald Trump's abrupt decision to launch talks with Russia on the end of its war in Ukraine has accelerated the rapprochement between the UK and EU member states with a flurry of leaders' meetings in various formats held over the past five weeks to discuss European defence and security guarantees for Ukraine.
On this topic, France and the UK are more in lockstep, having both indicated their readiness to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping mission following a negotiated truce between Moscow and Kyiv.
High representative Kaja Kallas, who has tabled an initiative for a coalition of the willing to provide military support worth up to €40 billion in the short term to Ukraine, is scheduled to visit the UK on Wednesday where she will meet Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin.
'I have high hopes on very fruitful discussions on all the issues,' Maasikas told lawmakers, 'on the pragmatic cooperation that goes on, and also on widening the basis for this cooperation.'
Each ChatGPT question is estimated to use around 10 times more electricity than a traditional Google search.
According to the nonprofit research firm Electric Power Research Institute, a ChatGPT request uses 2.9 watt-hours while traditional Google queries use about 0.3 watt-hours each.
With an estimated 9 billion daily searches, this would mean an additional demand of nearly 10 TWh of electricity per year.
The AI industry relies on data centres to train and operate its models, leading to increased energy demand and contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions.
Microsoft announced its CO2 emissions had risen nearly 30% since 2020 due to data centre expansion.
Google's global greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 were almost 50% higher than in 2019, largely due to the energy demand tied to data centres.
Energy use by artificial intelligence currently only represents a fraction of the technology sector's power consumption and is estimated to be around 2 to 3% of total global emissions.
However, this percentage is likely to go up as more companies, governments and organisations use AI to drive efficiency and productivity.
There are currently more than 8,000 data centres globally, with about 16% of these located in Europe.
The majority of these centres are concentrated in the financial centres of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin.
It is estimated that the electricity consumption in the data centre sector in the European Union will reach almost 150 TWh by 2026, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Electricity demand from data centres in Ireland was 5.3 TWh in 2022, representing 17% of the country's total electricity consumed.
That is equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed by all urban residential buildings.
If AI application use continues to expand at a rapid rate, the sector could account for 32% of the country's total electricity demand by 2026.
Denmark also hosts 34 data centres, half of them located in Copenhagen.
As in Ireland, Denmark's total electricity demand is forecast to grow mainly due to the data centre sector's expansion, which is expected to consume 6 TWh by 2026, reaching just under 20% of the country's electricity demand.
Meanwhile, data centres in Nordic countries – such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland – benefit from lower electricity costs.
This is attributed to lower cooling demand due to their colder weather.
The largest actor amongst Nordic countries is Sweden, with 60 data centres, and half of them in Stockholm.
Given decarbonisation targets, Sweden and Norway may further increase their participation in the data centre market since almost all of their electricity is generated from low-carbon sources.
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