Parliamentary petition seeks to limit BESS installations to AI Growth Zones

A new Parliamentary petition is calling on the Government to introduce an immediate moratorium on planning approvals for AI data centres and battery energy storage systems outside designated AI Growth Zones.

Those working in the industry likely will view the launch of the petition as leftfield, likely launched by a NIMBY, or someone opposed to AI infrastructure in general. That’s not the case, however. This particular petition was created by Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin, a Liberal Democrat councillor from Devon. She sits on both Torridge District Council and Devon County Council, where she is Cabinet Member for Rural Affairs and Broadband. 

It’s not the first time Lib Dems at the local level have pushed for stricter limits on BESS installations, typically around fire safety, but it’s the first time one has called for a nationwide moratorium outside of the five AI Growth Zones. 

The bizarre factor in this is the decision to limit BESS to those zones. After all, AI Growth Zones are intended to accelerate AI infrastructure by bringing greater focus to issues including power and planning. Batteries that are helping balance the grid, both on the national and local level, have a far bigger role to play than to just be the play things of data centres. 

As proposed, the moratorium would create an obvious tension with current energy policy. The Government's Clean Flexibility Roadmap describes grid-scale batteries as central to power-system flexibility and retains an ambition for 23 GW to 27 GW of capacity by 2030. It also identifies planning and grid connections as key delivery constraints. Further restricting BESS installations to just five areas would put the UK’s clean energy goals in jeopardy. 

Of course, we’ve seen petitions like this before – so it’s unlikely we’ll see any actual changes from the Government, but it does underline the growing challenge facing both data centre and battery developers – public opposition. While the challenges have historically come from hardline activists, both industries are now finding themselves under attack from more mainstream sources. 

That means developers will need to make a clearer case for why infrastructure needs to be located where it is, what impact it will have on the surrounding area and what benefits will remain with the host community.

For BESS projects in particular, that may also mean being clearer about what they do. A transmission-connected battery providing grid services is a very different proposition from storage installed primarily to support a large data centre, even if both sit under the same technology label.