Britain’s most polluting power plant could soon power the country’s largest datacentre under a £20bn deal to build AI infrastructure on the site of the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire. The power plant’s FTSE 250 owner has struck a deal with infrastructure investor Brookfield and and the AI infrastructure platform Radiant to develop a datacentre with an eventual capacity of more than 1 gigawatt which could begin operations by early 2028. In the initial phase of the project Drax will provide the datacentre project with land and access to the national power grid through existing connections on the site, but it hopes to begin powering the data centre directly by the early 2030s.
Drax said the development could attract more than £20bn ($26.8bn) in investment and represent “the next chapter” for the former power plant after ministers signalled plans to limit its power generation in the future. Will Gardiner, the chief executive of Drax, said the project would “help secure the long-term future of the site and protect hundreds of jobs” while “supporting the North’s reindustrialisation and strengthening sovereign AI capability”. The largest power plant in the UK produces almost 5% of the country’s electricity by burning woody biomass pellets, making the site the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide, according to analysts.
These emissions are not accounted for by the UK government because Drax claims that the equivalent carbon emissions are absorbed by growing trees which provide the waste wood used to make the biomass pellets.
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