Drax, Brookfield and Radiant, Brookfield’s UK-headquartered AI infrastructure platform, announce a new strategic partnership to jointly develop, deliver and operate GW-scale data centre capacity at Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire.
The Brookfield-Qai AI infrastructure joint venture will provide backing for the project. Brookfield estimate that total investment in the development could potentially exceed £20bn, including an initial £2.5bn as part of the first phase.
The companies are planning to develop data centre capacity on site in phases:
- Phase 1: targeting up to 100MW, operational from Q1 2028
- Phase 2: ambition to ramp up to 500MW of capacity between 2028 and 2031
- Phase 3: ambition to develop additional capacity post 2031
Progression of the first phase is subject to the timely progression of the necessary planning, as well as receiving the required regulatory and network approvals from Government and the system operator, in addition to securing a suitable tenant for the project.
The power station estate comprises 1,000 acres and 4GW of grid access, with 2.6GW of active dispatchable generation and cooling systems. The site also benefits from its proximity to the UK fibre network, making it ideal for faster and more certain development of data centres.
The UK Government is clear that countries able to host and power data centres will be better placed to protect their sovereignty, strengthen economic resilience, capture the benefits of the digital economy and shape the future of AI.
The companies welcome the Government’s new Data Centre Covenant and its pathway to accelerate time to power and planning for strategically important data centres. The companies’ initial assessment is that this project aligns with the Covenant’s criteria, supporting energy security, delivering local community benefits, meeting environmental standards, enabling reindustrialisation and strengthening the UK’s access to secure infrastructure.
As part of their shared commitment to delivering lasting local benefits, the partners expect to establish a voluntary community benefits fund, developed in consultation with communities around the Drax Power Station site, that is separate from and additional to any planning obligations and Drax’s existing community initiatives. A community consultation on the plans will begin shortly with the formal planning process following afterward.
Drax Group CEO, Will Gardiner, said, “Drax Power Station is one of the few UK sites that can provide large-scale reliable power directly to data centre customers by utilising existing and underutilised generation capacity. We welcome the Government’s recognition that strategically important data centres need faster access to power and planning. The priority now must be turning that ambition into delivery, so projects like this can move at the pace the UK needs to compete for global AI investment.”
Brookfield Head of AI infrastructure, Sikander Rashid, said, “Teaming up with Drax and Qai for this project represents a major opportunity for our AI infrastructure strategy. Our capital and deep operating capabilities will help accelerate the construction of a critical piece of sovereign AI, delivered by Radiant, our UK-headquartered compute infrastructure platform. In addition to preserving hundreds of jobs, this project will also create many direct and indirect jobs around the broader Yorkshire area.”
Radiant CEO, Mahdi Yahya, said, “By designing, building and operating from the UK, it will give British researchers, startups and enterprises access to frontier compute at home. Drax has powered Britain for more than fifty years. Together we can power its AI economy for the next fifty.”
