Key Takeaways
- • Brookfield and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) are making an initial £2.5B investment in a UK data centre campus that could eventually reach around 1 gigawatt of computing power, according to Bisnow.
- • The joint venture with UK power generator Drax will build the campus at Drax's north Yorkshire power station site, starting with a 100 MW first facility that could be operational by 2028, subject to planning consent and power-use approval.
- • Phase 2 adds another 400 MW by 2031, with ambition to exceed 1 GW thereafter; Brookfield says total investment could exceed £20B once semiconductor chip spending is included.
- • The investment is made through Radiant, Brookfield's AI infrastructure platform, and Qai, QIA's comparable platform, and is Brookfield's largest UK data centre commitment to date.
- • The project reflects a European trend of data centre developers pairing with power producers to bypass long grid connection queues.
Summary
Canadian asset manager Brookfield and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, are committing an initial £2.5B to a UK data centre project that could eventually total around 1 gigawatt of computing power, according to Bisnow. The partners have teamed up with UK power generation company Drax to develop a data centre campus on the site of Drax's power station in north Yorkshire.
The joint venture plans an initial facility providing 100 megawatts of computing power, which could be operational by 2028, provided planning consent is secured and permission is granted to use power generated by Drax for data centre operations. The first phase would use an existing grid connection Drax holds at the power station, while later phases would draw directly on energy produced by the site's biomass generators. Drax operates a biomass power plant with excess capacity that it is seeking to monetise through data centre development, reflecting a broader trend in Europe of data centre developers partnering with power companies to avoid lengthy connection queues for the wider energy grid.
Phase 2 would add another 400 MW of capacity by 2031, with the ambition of growing computing power beyond 1 GW after that date. Brookfield said total investment in the campus could exceed £20B once spending on semiconductor chips is included. The investment will be channelled through Radiant, Brookfield's AI infrastructure platform, and Qai, a comparable platform for QIA, which manages a sovereign wealth fund the article describes as worth $526B.
The project is Brookfield's largest UK data centre venture to date. For Drax, the deal is a positive development for a company that has faced scrutiny over how it sources the wood pellets it burns. The station began as a coal-fired plant in the mid-1960s and was converted to biomass generation in the 2010s.
Radiant CEO Mahdi Yahya said in a statement that by designing, building and operating from the UK, the project will give British researchers, startups and enterprises access to frontier compute at home.
The joint venture plans an initial facility providing 100 megawatts of computing power, which could be operational by 2028, provided planning consent is secured and permission is granted to use power generated by Drax for data centre operations. The first phase would use an existing grid connection Drax holds at the power station, while later phases would draw directly on energy produced by the site's biomass generators. Drax operates a biomass power plant with excess capacity that it is seeking to monetise through data centre development, reflecting a broader trend in Europe of data centre developers partnering with power companies to avoid lengthy connection queues for the wider energy grid.
Phase 2 would add another 400 MW of capacity by 2031, with the ambition of growing computing power beyond 1 GW after that date. Brookfield said total investment in the campus could exceed £20B once spending on semiconductor chips is included. The investment will be channelled through Radiant, Brookfield's AI infrastructure platform, and Qai, a comparable platform for QIA, which manages a sovereign wealth fund the article describes as worth $526B.
The project is Brookfield's largest UK data centre venture to date. For Drax, the deal is a positive development for a company that has faced scrutiny over how it sources the wood pellets it burns. The station began as a coal-fired plant in the mid-1960s and was converted to biomass generation in the 2010s.
Radiant CEO Mahdi Yahya said in a statement that by designing, building and operating from the UK, the project will give British researchers, startups and enterprises access to frontier compute at home.
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