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For prosperity and technical sovereignty, Europe needs its own AI factories - which is why Minister Mehring is proposing a European AI electricity price
Mehring: The AI race towards a digital future is still open. But Europe must now quickly wake up from its digital slumber and take concrete political initiatives. Otherwise, the prosperity of our homeland will be crushed between the USA and Asia.
Bavarias Digital Minister Dr. Fabian Mehring has advocated a reduced AI electricity price after a visit to the Leibniz Computing Center (LRZ). In order to become competitive in the global race for the new markets of the AI age, Mehring proposes limiting the energy costs for AI data centers. In order not to come into conflict with climate change, Mehrings proposal is that the special tariff should only apply to data centers whose chips and hardware meet a defined sustainability standard. In Germany, average industrial electricity prices in 2024 were around 17 cents - around twice as much as in the USA or China.
Digital Minister Dr. Fabian Mehring: AI needs energy - a hell of a lot of energy. As long as energy prices in Germany are more than twice as high as on the other side of the Atlantic, we cannot keep up in the race towards the digital future. Changing this with a view to the markets of the future must be a compelling lesson from our dependence on cheap gas from Russia on the markets of the present, which has brought the war back to Europe. In the future, a countrys technical sovereignty and economic prosperity will depend existentially on whether it can calculate at competitive prices in its AI factories. In order to be able to shape the digital future on a par with Asia and the USA, Germany urgently needs an adequate AI electricity price in order to be able to operate modern data centers competitively. We still have a chance of emerging as the winner of the great AI revolution of our time. But if we continue to stand by and watch as the USA invests a gigantic 500 billion in AI infrastructure, we will only be left with a place on the sidelines in the markets of the future, which we already occupy far too often. Then, with the EUs AI Act, we will have the most complex regulation on the planet, but no chance on the global market. Europe must therefore quickly wake up from its digital slumber and take concrete political initiatives - a uniform AI electricity price at a globally competitive level is a first step in this direction. If we do not see Trumps Stargate as a wake-up call, the prosperity of our homeland will be crushed in the markets of the future between the USA and Asia, said Minister Mehring.
According to a recent study by Bitkom, the number of installed servers worldwide is increasing continuously and is expected to exceed the 100 million mark in 2025. Demand for servers is particularly high in the USA and China. However, Germanys share of the global server inventory is declining significantly. While this share was still 3.5 percent in 2015, it fell to 2.5 percent by 2024. According to Mehrings ideas, the country should once again become significantly more attractive as a location for data centers, especially for those with the latest GPUs (AI chips). In return for the subsidized electricity price, the operators of state data centers in particular should increasingly grant start-ups access to high-performance computers so that they can develop their products. As well positioned as we are in AI research, especially in Bavaria with our high-tech agenda, we can still do much better when it comes to transferring it into concrete business models. That is why data centers should not only focus on scientific principles but also on products, said Mehring. At the same time, the minister also wants to set sustainability criteria for funding: Data centers for artificial intelligence require large amounts of energy. Hardware and chip technologies that are specifically designed to drastically reduce consumption are therefore promising markets for the future. It therefore makes sense to combine the AI electricity price with sustainability criteria and thus combine digital transformation with climate protection.
