Britain will require additional gas-fired generation to power a fast-growing data-centre sector unless ministers can accelerate the rollout of new nuclear capacity, a report has warned.
Around 50 new data centres announced over the past two years are due online within five, driving a projected fivefold increase in power demand by the end of the decade.
Oxford Economics, reporting for the Nuclear Industry Association, says nuclear’s “always on” output makes it better suited to data-centre baseload than intermittent wind and solar.
Without a major acceleration in nuclear development, the report concludes, much of the additional load will fall to gas — sharpening tensions between Sir Keir Starmer’s AI investment drive and Ed Miliband’s net-zero ambitions.
BP’s decision to abandon its Teesside hydrogen project in favour of a Prime Minister-backed data centre has already complicated the Energy Secretary’s targets, with analysts warning gas will inevitably bridge the gap in the short term.
The report notes that wind and solar cannot meet the forecast jump from 8.3TWh to 26.2TWh by 2030 without “large-scale battery storage and fossil fuel backup systems” that would risk “undermining sustainability goals”.
The UK Government says it is “unlocking a golden age of nuclear” to support energy-hungry sectors such as AI.