🏭Brookfield and Qai Plan £20B Datacenter at Drax Power Station in Yorkshire

Britain's biggest AI datacenter bet still needs a tenant

Brookfield and Qai want to build a £20 billion datacenter at Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire. If it happens, it's one of the biggest AI infrastructure projects in Britain, and the site already has the power and cooling most builders spend years chasing. Why should you care? Because grid access is the bottleneck for AI capacity in the UK, and Drax has 4GW of it on site. Its biomass contract lets it redirect up to 500MW straight from existing generation, which could mean less time waiting in the connection queue. If you're planning GPU capacity or hybrid cloud in the UK, put this location on your list. The catch? No tenant yet, and nothing gets built without one. Phase one is £2.5 billion for up to 100MW by early 2028. A second phase adds 500MW between 2028 and 2031. The UK government says all existing British datacenters together draw about 2GW, and Drax alone could eventually need more than 1GW. Public consultation starts this month, and a community benefits fund is required. Watch two things: whether a tenant signs, and whether planning and network approvals land on schedule.