His comments come in the wake of the UK government’s decision last week to designate data centres as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), putting them on par with essential services like energy and water.
The government’s announcement was swiftly followed by AWS’s commitment to invest $10 billion in UK data centres, signalling a strong push for the development of digital infrastructure.
But while this investment is a critical step, Rushworth and other leaders in the UK’s DeepTech sector argue that innovation is key to addressing the environmental and operational challenges posed by data centres.
“Data centres are central to national security and global competitiveness, but they come at an enormous energy cost,” said Rushworth.
“With data demand and AI usage growing exponentially, the challenge of powering data centres is only going to get bigger.”
Rushworth pointed to the recent case in Ireland, where Google’s application to build a new data centre was rejected due to concerns over its impact on the national power grid, where data centres already consume 21% of its capacity.
Rushworth’s company, Finchetto, is at the forefront of tackling the energy dilemma head-on. The startup is developing the world’s first fully optical passive network switch, which it says is 26 times more energy-efficient than current technologies.
Given that network switches account for 20% of data centre power use, Finchetto’s innovation could reduce overall energy consumption by nearly a fifth, offering a significant breakthrough at a time when data centre energy demands are forecasted to increase tenfold by 2050.
“Small innovations can have an outsized impact,” Rushworth explained.
“By making these core technologies more efficient, we can future-proof data centres for the coming explosion in demand.
“The UK government’s recognition of data centres as CNI is a positive step, but now we need to double down on supporting UK innovators who can make them more sustainable.”
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