THE CRUNCH
Drax, owner of Britain's largest power plant, has announced a deal with infrastructure investor Brookfield and its AI infrastructure business Radiant to build a datacentre development at its North Yorkshire site, with an eventual capacity of more than 1 gigawatt. The first phase would deliver up to 100MW of compute capacity from the first quarter of 2028, backed by a proposed £2.5bn investment, with a second phase potentially adding 500MW between 2028 and 2031.
The £20bn headline figure is more ambition than committed money at this stage, with the funding expected to come through a joint venture between Brookfield and Qatar's Qai. Drax's regulatory filing shows the first phase still needs planning permission, network approvals, commercial agreements, final investment decisions and, crucially, a tenant.
Drax argues its existing infrastructure gives it an edge over developers stuck in the queue for grid connections: the 1,000-acre site already has access to 4GW of grid capacity, 2.6GW of active generation, cooling infrastructure and proximity to the UK's fibre network. Initially the datacentre would draw power from the grid, but Drax hopes to supply up to 500MW directly from its own generation by the early 2030s, potentially running AI servers on electricity from burning imported wood pellets.
That direct supply is not guaranteed. Drax's government-backed Contract for Difference agreement, covering biomass generation from April 2027 to March 2031, allows it to request permission to redirect up to 500MW to a datacentre, but ministers and the Low Carbon Contracts Company would have to agree, weighing consumer value, energy security and sustainability. Drax hopes to clear the approvals before 2031 to secure future revenues, after the government signalled the plant would play a much more limited role and halved its subsidies from 2027.
The announcement came a week after the government published a draft national policy statement calling datacentres as fundamental to the economy as railways, though opposition to such facilities is growing over electricity bills, water use and local impact. Drax and its partners are promising a community benefits fund, with public consultation beginning this month.