The energy firm has revised its 2025 earnings estimate upwards as it presses on with major plans to expand operations into the burgeoning tech infrastructure sector.
Drax Group is considered one of Britain’s leading producers of low carbon electricity, most notably at its existing Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire and Cruachan Power Station in Oban, Scotland. Now the firm has outlined firm details for a proposed 100MW data centre.
The company issued adjusted 2025 earnings guidance last week, from £892 million to £909 million. It also pointed to around £2 billion in free cash flow being directed to expanding its existing operations and adding a new tech facility to the existing Selby site, home of the Drax Power Station.
An application is expected to be submitted imminently, with the data centre potentially coming online by 2027. Land occupied by an old coal power station, existing cooling systems, and transformers, will be utilised to speed up the development.
Drax’s plans don’t end there. Overall, there are long term aims to increase capacity at the data centre to 1GW across 1,000 acres. Separate to this, a number of battery energy storage projects are also on the horizon, following a deal with Apatura to take over three existing ventures for £157.2 million.
The data centre blueprint will be welcomed by many in the AI, digital, local and central government, adding yet more evidence that the UK is leading Europe’s capacity expansion in this area. The continent is currently lagging behind the US in terms of tech infrastructure, with around three times less capacity.
However, concerns remain high over the ecological impact of large scale data centres, many of which require vast amounts of energy and water to operate. Drax has already been at the centre of controversy over green subsidies for its biomass energy production – a process which involves burning wood pellets and is linked to air pollution.
Image: Homa Appliances / Unsplash
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