Drax and partners plan a phased data centre at its UK power station

Drax Group announced on 3 November 2026 that it has agreed with Brookfield and Radiant, Brookfield's UK-based AI infrastructure platform, to develop, build and run an AI data centre at Drax Power Station in northern England. Capital and operating support are to come from the Brookfield-Qai joint venture for AI infrastructure, which was announced in 2025.

The partners are aiming for more than 1 GW in total, in three phases. Drax says the first phase targets up to 100 MW of compute capacity, drawing electricity straight from the grid, with commercial operation targeted for the first quarter of 2028. Radiant is to lead design, customer work and commercialisation, including seeking anchor-customer commitments before building starts, while Drax takes the lead on the land, power integration and the planning process. Drax says a planning application for this phase is being prepared and that a public consultation is expected to start in November 2026.

Drax lists several conditions on phase 1: planning approval, the regulatory and network clearances that the Government and its relevant agencies must give, an acceptable tenant, agreed commercial terms and a final investment decision from each party. It also says the partners expect to set up a community benefits fund on a voluntary basis, shaped with nearby communities and separate from any planning obligations.

Phase 2 sets an ambition for options covering 500 MW of additional capacity over 2028 to 2031. Drax says it is expected to use the station's existing generation to supply a data centre behind the meter, with power around the clock under a long-term power purchase agreement, subject to consents. A third phase, after 2031, is an ambition for further capacity using the same behind-the-meter approach.

Drax says it signed a Contract for Difference with the UK Government in November 2025 covering about 6 TWh a year of biomass generation from April 2027 to March 2031, roughly 30% of the annual baseload output of its 2.6 GW of active generation. Drax says the contract includes a mechanism for it to request that up to 500 MW of capacity power a data centre in that period, which needs agreement from the Government and the Low Carbon Contracts Company; their decision weighs factors such as consumers' value for money, energy security and sustainability. Drax says the station's role in security of supply, low-carbon dispatchable power and system services stays the same.

Drax says the estate covers more than 1,000 acres beside one of the UK's largest substations, with about 4 GW of grid access, 2.6 GW of dispatchable generation in operation along with cooling systems, and nearby fibre links. Brookfield estimates that total investment, counting the chips themselves, could pass £20 billion, with £2.5 billion of it in phase 1.

Drax chief executive Will Gardiner says the project could secure the site's future and keep hundreds of jobs, and that built in full it could rank among the UK's largest data centres. Radiant chief executive Mahdi Yahya says it would let British researchers, start-ups and companies use frontier compute within the UK.