Google’s former boss has warned Sir Keir Starmer he will fail to meet his 2030 clean energy goal unless he fixes UK regulations.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive officer, said he believes Sir Keir can speed up regulation bureaucracy to ensure the government reaches its goal of decarbonising electricity by 2030.
But he said regulation is currently “killing you”.
Speaking to Sir Keir at the International Investment Summit in London, Mr Schmidt said: “Democracies, especially something as old as this one, have so many ways in which people can say no.
“I’d much rather – and I think the business community would much rather – have a single person who can say yes or no…and then they can move on.
“The cost of capital and the delay is killing you, and furthermore you’re not going to achieve your 2030 energy goal, which is laudable, without fixing this.
“You have a tactical leadership problem to achieve this and I think you can pull it off, but you have to figure out a way to get control.”
Sir Keir agreed the speed at which decisions get signed off “is a really big challenge”.
He said: “It has to be a cross-government priority, not just within the Treasury team. It’s going to be across government.
“So we are setting up some of the structures that will do this.
“But in the end, it’s a mindset. It’s a mindset that does this promote growth? Or does this not promote growth being the most important question we ask ourselves.”
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Ahead of the question and answer session between Sir Keir and Mr Schmidt, the prime minister promised to “rip up” bureaucracy and said it is “time to upgrade the regulatory regime”.
He said the government will “make sure that every regulator” in the country takes growth “as seriously as businesses”.
The government is expected to unveil deals in AI, life sciences and infrastructure during Monday’s summit, which is being attended by about 300 industry leaders worth an estimated £40trn in assets.
Mr Schmidt also urged Sir Keir to invest in data centres to help achieve clean power by 2030 by explaining how they go hand in hand, despite data centres using massive amounts of energy.
The former Google CEO called on Sir Keir to approve “the necessary steps” to have data centres in Britain.
He said the electricity the data centres use “allows us to build more materials” which ultimately provides a solution to green energy efficiency problems, and with improved efficiency, there would be more capital for further green power investment.
Moments after the pair appeared on stage together, the technology secretary announced global tech firms have invested a further £6.3bn into data centres in the UK, bringing the total investment into data centres to £25bn since July.
US firms CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ and CoreWeave will all base their data infrastructure in the UK.
