Kevin Gibbs and Sadie Pitman write for CoStar on the need for investment in power infrastructure to support new data centres

The Government recently unveiled its plans to “shape the AI revolution” through its “AI Opportunities Action Plan” released on 13 January 2025 (the AI Plan). The AI Plan sets out the Government’s intention for the UK to become a global leader in AI which in turn it believes will engineer economic growth.

But Kevin Gibbs, Senior Consultant, and Sadie Pitman, Senior Associate, both in our Real Estate & Planning team, pose the question in an an article for CoStar - is this currently achievable?

In the piece, Kevin and Sadie explain that while the UK Government has already made it clear that data centre build out is firmly on its agenda, these supercomputers will require huge amounts of power. They explain:

Some large data centres can consume as much electricity as a small town and measured in megawatts. Constraints on power supply, due largely to insufficient UK grid connections, threaten ambitions for the industry.

Kevin and Sadie go on to discuss some of the solutions that are currently being tested in the industry, which might alleviate some of these pressures in the future. They continue:

In order to source power supply the Government is advocating nuclear power in the form of small and advanced modular reactors (SMRs) as a potential answer [...]

"SMR technology does have its sceptics, but based on current research and development, they are generally considered to be a viable technology with the potential to work. It will be interesting to see if small scale nuclear and renewables across all variants can step up to plug the current capacity gap in the short-medium term and even supercharge the AI revolution in the long-term.

Read the full article in CoStar here (subscription required).