Drax, Britain's biggest biomass power plant, wants a £20B AI data center in North Yorkshire. It has no tenant yet, and local worries over power and water are growing.
Drax, the operator of Britain's largest biomass power plant, has unveiled plans for a £20 billion data center at its North Yorkshire site. The building would house computers for AI and could eventually use more than a gigawatt of power. There is a catch. No customer has signed up, and the £20 billion figure is more ambition than money on the table today.
Drax announced the project on Tuesday with investment firm Brookfield and its UK AI infrastructure business, Radiant. The money would flow through a joint venture between Brookfield and Qatar's Qai. The plan is to start small and grow in steps.
Many data center builders struggle to get a power connection. Drax says it has a head start. Its 1,000-acre site already has access to 4GW of grid capacity, 2.6GW of active generation and cooling systems, and it sits close to the UK's fiber network.
For scale, the UK government estimated last week that all of Britain's existing data centers use around 2GW. This one site could eventually need more than 1GW, though the real figure depends on how fully it is used.
Drax also wants to supply up to 500MW straight from its own generators under a long-term power purchase agreement. That could mean AI servers running on electricity made by burning imported wood pellets.
According to Drax's regulatory filing, the first phase still needs several things before building can begin.
There is another wrinkle. Drax signed a government-backed Contract for Difference last year, covering biomass power between April 2027 and March 2031. It lets Drax ask to redirect up to 500MW to a data center. Ministers and the Low Carbon Contracts Company would have to agree, weighing consumer value, energy security and sustainability.
Drax CEO Will Gardiner said the project could help secure the site's long-term future and protect hundreds of jobs. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds welcomed it as a step toward British reindustrialization and good jobs in Yorkshire.
Not everyone is as keen. Opposition to data centers is growing on both sides of the Atlantic, with communities raising concerns about electricity bills, water use and the effect on their surroundings. One recent investigation found businesses made up 84 percent of the stakeholders UK ministers met about data centers between July 2024 and June 2026. Environmental groups got no meetings.
Drax and its partners promise a community benefits fund. They say public consultation will begin this month.
A £20 billion headline is not a finished project: Drax still needs permits, approvals and a paying tenant before any AI servers go in.
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