- On June 6, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told a parliamentary hearing that artificial intelligence may soon need to be rationed because the electricity grid cannot keep up with its growth.
- Bailey warned that "very big social choices" lie ahead as firms and governments scramble to allocate limited energy between AI workloads and other sectors. He did not give a specific figure for AI’s current power draw, but cited a recent Bank of England analysis that projects AI‑related electricity use could outstrip growth in renewable capacity by 2030.
- The comment matters because it signals that policymakers view AI not just as a technology issue but as a resource‑allocation problem. If regulators start treating compute like water or bandwidth, developers may face caps on training runs or higher costs for cloud power.
- For now, the warning is a sober reminder that AI’s appetite for electricity could become a bottleneck before the technology itself hits any technical ceiling.