More than 100 new datacentres in the UK plan to burn gas to generate electricity, some potentially doing so permanently, as a years-long wait to connect to the National Grid forces developers to seek alternative power sources.
Grid connection delays drive gas reliance
Stuart Okin, the director of cyber regulation and AI at Ofgem, said there are 100GW of datacentre projects in the queue to connect to the grid. "Clearly that's not all going to be able to connect. If a project isn't going to get a connection, it is going to have to come up with an alternative method," he stated at the All-Energy conference in Glasgow.
Silvia Simon, head of research at Future Energy Networks, which represents the UK's natural gas suppliers, revealed that the group had received more than 100 requests for gas connections from datacentre operators in the past two years. These requests amount to over 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," Simon said. "This is already an indication that they're really struggling to get through to the electricity networks."
Climate targets under threat
Julian Leslie, director of strategic planning at the UK's National Energy System Operator (Neso), warned that 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," he said.
An energy consultant who worked for years in the sector noted a growing number of datacentre projects planning to rely on gas power permanently. "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."
US precedent and UK concerns
The trend mirrors developments in the US, where many AI datacentres rely on gas-fired generation. Eleven US datacentres built for Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and xAI reportedly will emit more carbon than the country of Morocco. In Tennessee, activists have battled Elon Musk's xAI for illegally running tens of methane-powered generators.
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, including 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."
Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, criticised the rush for hyperscale AI datacentres: "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." She added that conference sessions took it for granted that onsite gas generation would be needed due to grid congestion.
Ofgem is reforming demand connections to help viable projects connect faster, while the government considers whether changes are needed for prioritising strategic connections, potentially including some AI projects.
