Green Britain has 400GW of Stalled Data Center Requests, 60 – 70% will “Never Happen” – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

How long until British data center entrepreneurs get fed up with waiting?

London has 400 GW of grid requests holding up datacenter builds

And up to 70% of stalled energy generation projects are unlikely to be approved, claims regulator Ofgem

Dan Robinson 
Mon 10 Feb 2025  // 10:28 UTC

While the UK government wants to turbocharge datacenter construction, a newly published report says there are already 400 GW worth of outstanding requests for connection to the power grid around London, and regulator Ofgem estimates 60-70 percent of these will never happen.

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These figures are drawn from the EMEA Datacenter Market Update for H2 2024, published by global commercial real estate biz Cushman & Wakefield, and illustrate the challenge that face datacenter developers.

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In addition to power constraints, Cushman & Wakefield also highlights numerous other hurdles that datacenter builders are being confronted by across the EMEA region: limited land availability and strict sustainability regulations, all of which lean heavy on costs and project timelines.

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Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/10/london_has_400_gw_of/?td=rt-3a

I wonder why Britain is so short of energy? Nothing to do with squandering cash on useless renewables, and discouraging development of real energy, right?

This is not an opportunity which will wait.

Either Britain gets its act together and embraces participation in the information age industrial revolution, capitalising on Britain’s concentration of talent, supplying the endless cheap, reliable energy information age entrepreneurs need, or Britain plummets down the rankings of global economies and becomes a has been nation, an unimportant backwater outside the mainstream of the global economy.

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