Campaign group estimates emissions from proposed Drax AI datacentre
An environmental group's projection for the North Yorkshire project draws a sharp rebuttal from Drax.
A projection for a proposed facility
The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that Drax’s proposed AI datacentre in North Yorkshire would require 4.9 million tonnes of wood each year and produce 8.6 million tonnes of CO2, The Guardian reported on October 6. The campaign group used information in Drax’s annual report and assumed the facility would run at a constant rate throughout the year. The Guardian compared that projection with 4.79 million tonnes of CO2 from flights departing Gatwick in 2024. These are the group’s projected emissions for a facility that has not been built, not measured emissions.
Drax disputes the method
Drax has described options for a 1.2-gigawatt datacentre, with 100 megawatts supplied by the grid and the remainder from its power station, according to documents cited by The Guardian. The company told the newspaper that the campaign group’s claims were inaccurate and not independently verified, disputing both biomass accounting and assumptions about the eventual power mix. The project has not entered the formal planning process. Drax says it could be fully operational from 2031 if it secures the required consents. The dispute turns on assumptions about a possible future operation; neither the final design nor its actual emissions is established.