AI data centres eye gas power, threatening UK net zero target

Four planned hyperscale data centres in the UK are already eyeing gas-fired power to keep their servers humming, BBC File on 4 Investigates has found. Three of them sit in southern England. Run flat out, those four sites would need 1.3 gigawatts and pump out an estimated 4.1 million tonnes of CO2 a year, per the BBC. That's more carbon than Manchester, Liverpool and Southampton emit combined.

The door was opened during Wednesday's Budget, when the chancellor said data centres could build their own onsite generation while they wait in line for a grid connection. The same Budget unveiled a British Data Centre Covenant: priority access to the grid in exchange for investing in local communities, creating jobs and protecting water supplies. Data centres, the government insists, are essential to Britain's economy.

The queue is the problem. Ofgem says developers are asking for grid connections totalling 72 gigawatts. Peak demand across the whole country last year was 45 gigawatts. Nathan McWhinnie, the regulator's head of market intelligence and oversight, put the scale bluntly: some of these projects are the size of cities, and in a lot of places the grid is already at capacity. Some developers have been told the wait could stretch to 10 years.

The workarounds are taking shape. At Acre Slough, west of London, developers say gas engines of up to 49.5 megawatts could fill the gap while they wait at least a decade for a National Grid connection. At Wapsey's Wood in Buckinghamshire, a proposed 200-megawatt gas power station could run until enough grid capacity shows up, currently not expected until 2040. Quest Park wants a 1-gigawatt data centre in a Bedfordshire quarry pit near the planned Universal theme park, and in Cardiff a developer is seeking permission for turbines of up to 49.9 megawatts for as long as five years. All four say they intend to plug into the national grid when it can take them.

Not everyone is thrilled. Toby Perkins, the Labour MP chairing the Environmental Audit Select Committee, said a substantial rise in natural gas use can't be the future, and that government shouldn't let anyone who wants to build here do whatever they like to power it. Buckinghamshire councillor Ed Gemmell, who leads the Climate Party, warned of a precedent that could scatter gas-fired power stations nationwide and blow a hole in environmental targets.

Oliver Hayes of the environmental charity Global Action Plan raised the local cost too: gas turbines on people's doorsteps, heavy air pollution, noise, and water drawn from local supplies. Quest Park director David Kohler has previously told the BBC its energy mix is still a work in progress, with renewables sensible but needing to be feasible, and said 1 gigawatt of solar would take an area equal to 15% of Bedfordshire. A government spokesperson said pausing development would push jobs, investment and data overseas, and that any behind-the-meter generation would be tightly controlled, time-limited and reserved for exceptionally strategic projects.