Plans unveiled by Drax last year would convert part of its biomass plant in North Yorkshire into a datacentre, responding to rising demand for artificial intelligence capability. AI datacentres use large amounts of electricity to power servers, cooling equipment and facility systems. Across the UK, 315 datacentres are queued to connect to the electricity grid, representing 73GW of demand, almost double the country's peak winter energy demand.
In public documents, Drax says it is developing options for a 1.2GW datacentre, with 100MW drawn from the electricity grid and the remainder supplied by its own power station. The plant currently burns millions of tonnes of imported wood to create energy, a method the company has touted as clean and capable of delivering "negative emissions", on the basis that replacement forests absorb CO2 as they grow. Scientists and environmental experts strongly contest this accounting approach, with researchers finding such systems could take 150 years to become carbon negative.
The NRDC estimate, based on information in Drax's 2025 annual report, assumes the datacentre would burn 4.9 million tonnes of wood a year while running at a constant rate for all hours of the year, producing total emissions of 8.6 million tonnes of CO2. That is nearly double the 4.79 million tonnes of CO2 emitted by all flights from Gatwick airport in 2024.
Matt Williams, a senior advocate at NRDC, said this would make it "one of the dirtiest datacentres out there". Oliver Hayes, head of policy at the campaign group Global Action Plan, said: "Burning millions of trees to power server farms is indefensible."
The datacentre has not yet entered the formal planning process, but Drax said it could be fully operational from 2031 if it secured the necessary consents. Williams said the government must "urgently set minimum standards for datacentres and rule out dirty energy generation like burning trees".