Drax, Brookfield, Radiant plan £20B Yorkshire AI data centre

Drax, Brookfield and Radiant said they will jointly develop more than a gigawatt of AI data centre capacity at Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, in a project Brookfield estimates could draw more than £20 billion ($26.8 billion) in investment if built in full, CNBC reported. Drax Group shares jumped more than 8% on the news.

The build is phased. Phase one targets up to 100 MW of capacity live by the first quarter of 2028, backed by an initial £2.5 billion commitment. A further 500 MW is slated to come online between 2028 and 2031, with the partners "looking to secure more than 1 gigawatt of capacity at the site" longer term.

What Drax actually brings to the deal is the grid. The estate has a 4 GW connection and 2.6 GW of dispatchable generation already on site, and existing Drax generation would supply round-the-clock power to the data centre under a long-term power purchase agreement. "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," Drax Group CEO Will Gardiner said, adding that "if constructed in full, this project could become one of the largest data centres in the U.K."

Radiant, described as Brookfield's UK-headquartered AI infrastructure platform, is leading design, customer engagement and commercialisation. Capital flows through the Brookfield-Qai AI infrastructure joint venture. No anchor tenant has been named. The planning application is still being prepared, with public consultation expected to begin in November 2026.

The subsidy clock is also ticking in the background. Drax's current subsidy scheme expires in March 2031, and JPMorgan analysts argued the announcement raised confidence that the station will continue operating beyond that date. The deal lands amid 460 AI-infrastructure stories we have logged in the last 90 days, and it fits a specific pattern: in 2026 the scarcest asset in the European AI buildout is not capital but a usable multi-gigawatt grid connection.