THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • Drax will provide land and power at its North Yorkshire site, Brookfield the capital through a joint venture with Qatar's Qai, and Radiant will build and operate the data centres.
  • Phase 1, backed by an initial £2.5bn, targets up to 100MW from the first quarter of 2028; a ramp to 500MW between 2028 and 2031 is an ambition, not a commitment.
  • The £20bn-plus figure is Brookfield's estimate, and no tenant, planning permission or network approval has been secured yet.

Drax Group wants to turn part of its power station in North Yorkshire into a large AI data centre campus. On November 3, the energy company announced a partnership with investment firm Brookfield and Radiant, Brookfield's UK-based AI infrastructure platform. Brookfield estimates that total investment could exceed £20bn if every phase goes ahead.

Who does what

Under the plan, Drax supplies the site and power, while Brookfield brings capital through its AI infrastructure joint venture with Qai, a technology company headquartered in Qatar. Radiant would build and run the data centres. The 1,000-acre estate already has 4GW of grid access, 2.6GW of dispatchable generation, cooling systems and nearby fibre links, which the partners present as the main reason to build there.

The first phase has an initial £2.5bn of backing and targets up to 100MW of capacity from the first quarter of 2028. The partners describe a second phase reaching 500MW between 2028 and 2031, and further capacity after that, as ambitions. According to The Register, later stages would take the site past 1GW. For comparison, the outlet notes that the UK government estimated in October that all existing British data centres draw about 2GW.

Conditions and open questions

The announcement comes with many conditions. Drax says the first phase depends on timely planning progress, regulatory and network approvals from the government and the system operator, and on finding a suitable tenant; no customer has been named. A community consultation is due to start shortly, with the planning process targeted in the coming months, and the partners promise a voluntary community benefits fund.

Power supply is another point to watch. The Register reports that the first phase would run on grid electricity, but Drax hopes to supply up to 500MW directly from its own generation under a long-term power purchase agreement. That plant mainly burns imported wood pellets, and its government-backed contract for biomass generation from April 2027 to March 2031 lets Drax ask to redirect up to 500MW to a data centre only with approval from ministers and the Low Carbon Contracts Company.

The project lands amid growing local opposition to data centres in the UK and the US over electricity bills, water use and the impact of large industrial sites. Drax chief executive Will Gardiner argues it could help protect hundreds of jobs at the site.