How Industrial AI Can Power the Next Chapter of UK Growth
Earlier this month, in a speech at the Innovation Nation Summit, Prime Minister Andy Burnham set out his ambitions to 're-industrialise' the UK, turning it into an "innovation-led" and "research driven" economy. This is a welcome ambition. One area in which the UK has a chance to show global leadership and drive economic value is in the field of industrial AI applications. Harnessing the power of industrial AI will be key to developing the infrastructure systems needed to support UK innovation. Industrial AI helps organisations to optimise production, predict equipment failures, improve energy efficiency, strengthen supply chains and manage complex infrastructure networks. These applications of AI are already creating measurable gains in productivity, sustainability and cost savings.
The Prime Minister is right in pointing out that becoming an innovation-led economy will involve developing globally significant innovation clusters across the UK. On an industrial level, this presents a major opportunity to make data sharing central to national infrastructure and regional growth, helping to build a more resilient, productive and lower-carbon economy. The success of this next phase of industrialisation will depend on how effectively these innovation clusters, and the infrastructure supporting them, can share information and operate as a connected system.
We know that where connection is possible, the benefits are clear: UK Power Networks, which serves more than 8 million homes and businesses across the South East of England, uses AVEVA solutions to contextualise more than 4 billion data points every day, allowing it to deploy AI solutions moving from reactive to predictive network management, identifying faults before they caused outages and optimising for more distributed renewable energy.
There are still barriers to overcome. Recent IMD research shows only 27% of industrial businesses frequently share data with external stakeholders, despite 74% of industrial leaders considering digital data ecosystems a priority. While the operational benefits are clear, the main barrier is not technical capability but, surprisingly, governance. Commercial sensitivity, cyber security, unclear standards, poor interoperability and expensive integrations continue to limit collaboration. These concerns are real, which is exactly why trusted frameworks and incentives are needed in place of ad hoc data exchanges.
We need interdependent systems that are joined up at regional, industrial cluster or city level to drive benefits at scale. If we are to get this right, the government must work with industry. Setting common standards for interoperability and security, establishing accountability for cross-sector data sharing, and setting up pilot funding to prove the model cansupport the UK to 're-industrialise' on the basis of tomorrow’s technologies, not today’s.
Initiatives such as the World Economic Forum’s Transitioning Industrial Clusters (TIC), programme, which brings together 43 industrial clusters globally, including 3 in the UK, show how coordinated data ecosystems with clear governance frameworks can deliver benefits at scale, bringing companies and different sector clusters together to share resources and best practices in industrial data sharing and AI deployment in the energy system. The emissions reduction potential is significant: estimated at around 870 million tons of CO₂ across the 43 clusters part of the TIC initiative. In the UK, industrial clusters are responsible for 50% of the country’s total industry emissions, showing the importance of addressing the issue.
We know that the UK government is reshaping the electricity grid, water sector and planning system, as well as delivering 10-year infrastructure and industrial strategies. We are now at an important moment in time, where we have the opportunity to use AI to embed new operational models to optimise our infrastructure. Let's seize it while we can.
