AI datacentres plan gas power plants nearly 4x the size of Britain's grid
New research finds developers are lining up 181GW of on-site gas power for AI datacentres to dodge grid delays, risking fossil-fuel lock-in.
What happened: Research from BloombergNEF, released as the UN climate summit opened in Turkey, finds that AI datacentre developers across the US, UK and mainland Europe have proposed building their own gas-fired power stations on-site, adding up to roughly 181 gigawatts of capacity. That's nearly four times Great Britain's total peak electricity demand. The driving force is simple: waiting years for a national grid connection is too slow for the pace AI companies want to expand at, so many are choosing to generate their own power instead, starting with fossil fuels because they can be built fast.
Why it matters: If all these gas plants get built and run, BloombergNEF estimates they would emit about 345 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year, comparable to the annual emissions of roughly 73 million petrol cars. Around 90% of this planned gas capacity sits in the US. The timing is pointed: the findings landed the same week as COP31, while several major European leaders skipped the summit for a separate AI-focused meeting in Dublin, underlining how central AI's energy appetite has become to climate politics.
How it works, plainly: Datacentres need huge, reliable power, and connecting to a national grid can take years because of queues and capacity limits. Developers call on-site gas plants a stopgap: generate your own electricity now, switch to the grid later. But BloombergNEF's Mark Daly warns the economics can work against that promise. Once a gas plant is built and running, there's often no strong incentive to shut it down, even after a grid connection becomes available, creating a longer-term fossil fuel presence than originally advertised.
The rollout: In the UK, datacentre developers made over 100 inquiries in 2024-25 about connecting to gas networks due to grid delays, with sites like Wapseys Wood in Buckinghamshire and Quest Park in Bedfordshire seeking their own gas plants. Both are being fast-tracked through a national infrastructure process that skips local council planning approval. Chancellor John Healey has formally backed datacentres running temporary on-site gas power as part of a new 'datacentre covenant,' a move campaigners call a dangerous precedent for climate policy.