More than 100 new datacentres in the UK plan to burn gas to generate electricity, some potentially doing so permanently, as they face years-long waits to connect to the National Grid. British officials say this trend raises an “interesting question” about the UK’s climate targets.
Grid Connection Queue Overwhelmed
“There’s 100GW of datacentre projects in the queue,” said Stuart Okin, the director of cyber regulation and AI at Ofgem. “Clearly that’s not all going to be able to connect [to the grid]. If a project isn’t going to get a connection, it is going to have to come up with an alternative method.” Okin spoke on the sidelines of All-Energy, the UK’s largest renewable and low-carbon energy conference in Glasgow.
Gas Demand Surge
Silvia Simon, head of research at Future Energy Networks, which represents the UK’s natural gas suppliers, said the group had received “more than 100” requests for gas connections from datacentre operators in the past two years. These requests amount to more than 15 terawatt hours of energy each year, enough to power London for roughly four and a half months. “Gas networks are seeing a lot of interest from datacentre developers looking to secure a gas connection. Not just for resilience, but for primary supply. So this is already an indication that they’re really struggling to get through to the electricity networks,” she said.
Permanent Gas Use
An energy consultant who worked for years in the sector noted a growing number of datacentre projects planning to rely on gas power permanently, not just as a temporary fix. “Using gas networks was previously avoided due to carbon, permitting, and land-take impacts, and has typically only been considered as a temporary fix. But developers are now increasingly turning to fossil fuels, in some cases requesting over 100MW of gas power on a permanent basis.”
Climate Target Complications
Julian Leslie, director of strategic planning at the UK’s National Energy System Operator (Neso), said this gas buildout could complicate Britain’s climate goals. “The target was to get less than 5% of unabated gas supplying electricity in the system. But obviously if we’ve got datacentres not connected to electricity but powered by unabated gas then it does raise an interesting question about what that means for the Clean Power 2030 target.”
Ofgem and Government Response
Eleanor Warburton, Ofgem’s director for energy system design and development, acknowledged the challenge: “The growth of artificial intelligence is affecting many aspects of life including energy – this includes an associated growth in data centres. Connections are being delivered, but the system must work better for projects that are viable and ready to proceed. We are in the process of reforming demand connections so that viable projects can connect faster while Government is looking at the question of whether changes are needed regarding the prioritisation of strategic connections, which could include some AI projects.”
Criticism from Activists
Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, an Edinburgh-based charity, criticised the trend: “Those promoting the rush for hyperscale AI datacentres seem to be living in a parallel reality where the last 50 years of climate science hasn’t happened, and where we aren’t already experiencing the signs of climate breakdown. The conference sessions on AI and hyperscale datacentres seemed to be taking it for granted that onsite gas generation would be needed if these ultra energy intensive developments are to happen, due to the impossibility of connecting them to our congested grid.”
Global Context
Governments and big tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI programmes. In the US, many projects rely on gas-fired generation. In Tennessee, activists have battled Elon Musk’s xAI for illegally running tens of methane-powered generators, risking community health. Eleven US datacentres built to serve Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft and xAI reportedly will emit more carbon than the country of Morocco. Now the same trend could be emerging in Britain.
