AI datacentres plan on-site power stations on huge scale despite climate risks, research reveals

Developers of AI datacentres plan to build on-site climate-destroying gas power stations on a huge scale to meet their energy demands, research reveals.

Datacentres planned across the US, the UK and mainland Europe have proposals to build fossil fuel plants on-site to create 181GW of gas-fired capacity because of delays to connect to national grids, according to the findings. This is almost four times the total peak electricity demand of Great Britain.

The research by BloombergNEF says this “speed to power” will – if the planned rollout happens – emit about 345m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year in the US, where 90% of on-site gas-fired power stations are planned. This is equivalent to annual greenhouse gas emissions from about 72.8m fossil fuel cars.

The report was published on Wednesday as global leaders gathered in Turkey for the 31st UN climate summit, where increasing electrification – ideally from clean sources – is a central part of discussions. However, a number of key European leaders, including from France and Germany, will not be at Cop31, instead heading to Dublin where EU leaders will hold their first dedicated AI summit on Friday.

Mark Daly, the head of datacentres and emerging tech at BloombergNEF, said: “The extraordinary economics around AI are making speed to power one of the most important priorities for defining constraints on datacentre developers.

“The climate outcome will depend not only on how much electricity these facilities use, but on how quickly grids can connect them and whether power systems add cleaner generation alongside that demand.”

By 2035, the electricity demand of AI datacentres was predicted to almost quadruple to 2,354 terawatt-hours – equivalent to 7% of global electricity demand – the report said.

AI datacentres use a massive amount of electricity to power servers and cool equipment, and to run facility systems.

Daly said while the developers of the future datacentres claimed their gas-fired power supplies would be temporary while they waited for grid connections, once they were online, the economics could encourage them to continue generating energy, creating a longer-term fossil-fuel lock-in risk.

The report said ensuring new datacentres were connected to the grid was the more sustainable option. Faster grid connections were crucial to limiting emissions impacts and locking in fossil fuel risk, it said.

UK planned datacentres made more than 100 inquiries in 2024-5 to connect to gas as a result of delays in securing access to the electricity grid, according to Future Energy Networks, the representative body for the UK gas networks.

For example, Wapseys Wood, Buckinghamshire and Quest Park, Bedfordshire are seeking to build their own on-site gas-fired power stations because of the long wait to connect to the grid. The datacentres are among the first to be fast-tracked through the government’s nationally significant infrastructure project regime, which allows developers to rapidly deliver major infrastructure, bypassing locally elected planning authorities.

But the use of fossil fuel power generation on site is likely to be repeated by many more UK sites after the chancellor, John Healey, gave the green light for datacentres to build and run temporary on-site fossil fuel power stations while they wait for connections to the grid, as part of a so-called datacentre covenant.

Oliver Hayes, the head of policy and campaigns at Global Action Plan , said: “Private gas power stations for datacentres should be a red line for any government serious about climate action, so it’s shocking to see the chancellor give them his explicit backing.

“No one seriously believes these gas power stations will be temporary – once they’re built, they’ll lock in high emissions for years.”