In 2025, planning applications for data centres in England and Wales soared by 63%, driven largely by demand from the AI sector and growing investor interest. The trend highlights a shift in property development towards unconventional sites for data centre construction.
• Significant Increase: The number of planning applications for new data centres exceeded 60 in England and Wales, reflecting a surge in activity from the previous year. The figure does not include existing site extensions or applications for developments that incorporate data centres.
• AI Demand: This increase is tightly linked to the burgeoning AI industry and the power needs of large language models. Property developers are scrambling to transform various sites—such as abandoned hotels, coal mines, and landfills—into data centres.
• Location Trends: Around 50% of applications are concentrated in London and the South East, a hotspot for data centres, although applications are emerging in other regions, including Wales and the East Midlands.
• Creative Site Choices: Developers are showing creativity in site selection, such as reimagining old hotels and industrial sites as data centre facilities.
• Power and Planning Challenges: Despite the high number of applications, the actual number of data centres built may be lower due to power supply constraints and competition for investment. Developers increasingly consider “bring your own power” solutions to meet energy demands.
• Government Initiatives: The government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan and the establishment of "AI Growth Zones" are identified as key factors fueling the rise in planning applications.
The remarkable increase in data centre planning applications in the UK demonstrates both the urgency of supply in response to the AI boom and the potential obstacles developers face regarding power availability and site selection.
No comments:
Post a Comment