Connection challenge could hamper nuclear powered France's bid as AI hub

PARIS : The time needed to connect power-hungry data centres to the electricity grid could blunt France's advantage using its abundant nuclear power to lure billions of dollars of investment into artificial intelligence, investors and experts said.

Hosting a global summit on AI this week, French President Emmanuel Macron credited the country's reliable and clean nuclear power with helping attract more than 100 billion euros ($103.26 billion) in AI investments as Europe races to catch up with the United States, the global leader.

Among the pledges was a $10 billion facility for a supercomputer operated by UK-based Fluidstack that will eventually need 1 gigawatt (GW) of power, roughly the amount generated by one of France's smaller nuclear reactors.

Asset manager Brookfield said it would spend 20 billion euros on AI infrastructure in France, including data centres.

With 57 nuclear reactors, France produces more than two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear power. Last year, it exported a record amount, about 17 per cent of its production, mostly to Italy.

Data centres would lift demand for power, following a slump in industrial consumption after Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered soaring energy prices.

However, planned data centres could still be years away, experts said, with burdensome permitting and construction procedures hampering a quick buildout.

"The countries that have the electricity supply ... (which is) sustainable and affordable, they are one step ahead of the others," Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told global leaders and tech executives attending the summit on Tuesday.

"But the problem is the following ... a data centre you build in less than one year, but the transmission lines for electricity you need about five years to build."

'NUTS AND BOLTS'

Construction in Europe is especially slow, said Anj Midha, general partner at U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

"The nuts and bolts of actually assembling the data centres in time, running the cables, sort of the ground logistics of this all require a level of permitting and construction acceleration that the U.S. is far ahead on," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the AI summit.

In an effort to speed up the process, state-owned utility EDF said on Monday it had identified four sites on its own land for data centres, with grid connections already in place, and total available power of about 2 GW.

"This will reduce the time needed to complete projects by several years," it said in a statement.

EDF said in November that it was in talks with three companies to power their 1 GW data centre projects in France, but cautioned that the projects could take years to complete, slowed down by the cost and public consultation required to build new high-voltage power lines.

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