Drax Group has signed an agreement to develop a large artificial intelligence data centre on the estate of its power station in North Yorkshire, in one of the biggest UK energy-and-technology projects announced this year.
The partnership brings together Drax, the FTSE 100 power generator, with Brookfield and Radiant, Brookfield’s UK-headquartered AI infrastructure platform. Investment capital and operating expertise will come through a Brookfield-Qai AI infrastructure joint venture announced in 2025.
Brookfield estimates that total potential investment, including semiconductor chips, could exceed £20 billion if the site is developed in full. The first phase alone is expected to involve about £2.5 billion.
That opening phase targets up to 100 megawatts of computing capacity, with commercial operations aimed for the first quarter of 2028. It would draw power directly from the grid using existing infrastructure at the Drax site.
A second phase, described as an ambition rather than a committed build, would add about 500 megawatts between 2028 and 2031. Later phases after 2031 would take total capacity beyond one gigawatt. In those later stages, power could be supplied directly from Drax’s own generation under a long-term purchase agreement.
The pitch rests on infrastructure already in place. Drax says the estate covers more than 1,000 acres and offers about four gigawatts of grid access alongside 2.6 gigawatts of active dispatchable generation, plus cooling systems — assets that are often the hardest part of building a data centre at scale.
Radiant will lead design, customer engagement and commercialisation, while Drax will handle land, power integration and planning. No anchor customer has been named, and securing an acceptable tenant is one of the conditions for the first phase to proceed.
The project is not yet a done deal. Progress depends on planning approval, regulatory and network approvals, commercial agreements and a final investment decision by each partner. A planning application is being prepared, with public consultation expected to begin in November 2026.
The deal also touches Drax’s existing government-backed generation contract. Drax signed a contract-for-difference agreement in November 2025 covering about six terawatt-hours of biomass generation a year from April 2027 to March 2031, and the partners say a mechanism in that arrangement could allow up to 500 megawatts of capacity to be used for a data centre, subject to agreement.
If it proceeds, the partners argue the site could give British researchers, start-ups and businesses access to frontier computing capacity at home, rather than relying on overseas facilities. For Drax, it would mark a further step in repurposing a site long associated with coal and biomass generation into a hub for the AI economy.
Sources: Drax Group strategic partnership announcement, 3 November 2026 (https://uk.advfn.com/stock-market/london/drax-DRX/share-news/Drax-Group-PLC-Strategic-partnership-for-GW-scale/99613377); Unite.AI report on the announcement (https://www.unite.ai/drax-signs-ai-data-center-partnership-for-north-yorkshire-power-site/).
Note: The featured image is a file photo of the existing Drax Power Station, not of the proposed data centre.
