The capacity being built, what it delivers, and the sourced footprint of constructing and running it — CO₂e, water and hardware lifecycle.
Capacity estimates range 1.6–2.9 GW depending on methodology (EPC-derived vs IT-power estimates — Oxford Economics' IT-power method gives 2.9 GW today with 6.2 GW to be added by 2030); this page uses the Computer Weekly / Barbour ABI basis throughout for internal consistency.
Cumulative installed capacity (area) versus the full announced pipeline (line). The government's 6 GW AI-capable target for 2030 sits above the planning-approved trajectory of ~4.9 GW — the gap is the build that is announced but not yet consented. Figures are approximate, drawn from the sources below.
Capacity & factors (editable)
Operational capacity is heavily concentrated. London and the M4 corridor hold over half; the next planned giants shift weight toward the Humber, North East and Scotland.
Largest single planned builds announced
A full geographic heatmap (production vs consumption by postcode/region) is a sensible next step, but reliable per-site consumption data is scarce — operators self-report inconsistently. This cluster view uses the regional figures that are actually published.
NESO's data-centre demand estimate against the theoretical ceiling of the operational fleet (MW × 8,760 h). The demand line sits at an implied fleet-average load factor of roughly 0.4–0.55 — shown as the shaded band. Per-site utilisation is not public anywhere and is not synthesised here. The system-level tension: >70 GW of connection requests against a ~8 GW realistic pipeline.
Fleet emissions can be counted two ways: location-based (grid average × consumption) or market-based (netting renewable certificates & PPAs). Vendors report the second; the delta is the certificates. The rules permit it — but REC-matched ≠ real-time zero-carbon. This site stays location-based throughout — handbook §4 explains why.
2024 reporting year, Mt CO₂e. Location-based estimates from an academic analysis of the 2025 sustainability reports; market-based figures are the vendors' own. Context: scope 3 dwarfs both — 97% of Microsoft's total footprint (+26% since 2020); Google's scope 3 +22% YoY (2025 reports).
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK capacity & pipeline | 1.6 GW now · 8.1 GW pipeline · 4.9 GW likely by 2030 | Computer Weekly / Barbour ABI (2026) |
| Gov 6 GW AI target; 266 DCs | 6 GW by 2030 · 266 sites (2024) | Oxford Economics (2026) |
| Construction embodied carbon | ~200 tCO₂e/MW (10 MW ≈ 1–2 kt concrete CO₂) | Texas DC LCA, arXiv (2025) · ATLAS (200–800 kg/m²) |
| Hardware embodied (per MW IT) | 1,100 tCO₂e/MW · range 750–1,500 · AI-dense halls likely >1,500 | ADW / CIBSE TM65 (2025) |
| Server embodied carbon (alt. preset) | ~1.8–3.3 tCO₂e/server × servers/MW | Google, Life-Cycle Emissions of AI Hardware (2025) — note AI-accelerator servers draw >1 kW, so AI halls run ~100–200 servers/MW, not 1,000 |
| Hardware refresh cycle | 3–5 years | Sustainable LLM Serving (2025) |
| Water (WUE) | UK ≈0.5 · EU ≈0.6 · global evap ≈1.9 L/kWh · 1 MW evap ≈ 26 ML/yr | WRc for MOSL (2026) · EESI / Green Grid · Univ. of Manchester (2025) · UK Gov water report (2025) |
| What the water figures exclude | off-site water · seasonality | On-site WUE only: water consumed generating the electricity (thermal-plant cooling) typically exceeds on-site cooling water severalfold. And the UK concern is peak coincidence — hybrid-cooled sites draw water during heatwaves exactly when domestic demand peaks (WRc/MOSL) — which annual averages hide. |
| UK demand vs supply (NESO) | ~5.2 GW connected by 2030 · ~20 TWh demand · >70 GW connection requests | NESO — the 70 GW connection queue against the ~8 GW realistic pipeline is the hype-vs-steel gap. |
| Scope-2 gap (location vs market) | Microsoft 25.2 vs 15.5 Mt · Google 23.4 vs 15.2 Mt (2024) | Papaevangelou & Vogiatzoglou (2026) · vendor 2025 sustainability reports |
| UK site map | ~23 curated sites (of ~190 EPC-identified) | GOV.UK AI Growth Zones · Nscale/Microsoft/OpenAI (2025) · operator pages · press-cited planning applications — per-marker source & confidence in each tooltip |
| World map — capacity shares | ≈55 GW global IT (mid-2025) · US ≈50% · Europe ≈18% · China ≈10% · US 180 TWh / China 102 TWh (2024) | IEA, Energy and AI (2025) |
| World map — grid-CI choropleth | display only; UK/US/France anchors match gridFactor | Ember Yearly Electricity Data (2024) — non-anchor countries VERIFY |
All factors are editable and represent academic/industry approximations — the literature spans wide ranges (server embodied carbon alone varies ~40× across published LCAs), so treat outputs as order-of-magnitude. The CO₂e/water bases here are read from the same shared factors as the AI Impact Calculator (one gridFactor, one WUE set) so totals reconcile across the site. Runs in your browser.