Context

Power and the grid

Data centres take large, steady electricity loads. Where the local grid is already tight, new connections for other uses can wait years.

Yorkshire. The corridor’s defining pattern is reuse of retired coal-power sites and the grid connections they leave behind: Skelton Grange (former 800 MW coal station), Eggborough (former 1,960 MW station, closed 2018), and Mountpark Ferrybridge (former Ferrybridge C coal stock yard). Drax states its first phase would reuse the grid connection that served coal generation. Where new load is added on farmland instead, it is large: Elsham Tech Park lists an on-site energy-centre parameter of up to about 49.9 MW alongside up to 1 GW of IT load (North Lincolnshire Council committee report PA/2025/643).

US. Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” is the world’s densest cluster. Loudoun County supervisor Mike Turner, citing Dominion Energy figures, puts the county’s data-centre power consumption at about 5.33 GW in 2025, up from 4.14 GW in 2024 (his earlier years are read off a Dominion chart). The presentation is his own and states it does not represent the county. Dominion Energy has reported tens of gigawatts under contract across its Virginia service area. (Turner, “Data Center Growth”, July 2026; DCD on Dominion’s contract pipeline, 2025.) Read it as scale, not as identical grid conditions to the north of England.

Mitigations on record here: reuse of existing coal-station grid connections rather than new greenfield ones (Drax, Skelton Grange, Eggborough, Ferrybridge), and substation plus battery storage listed in the reserved-matters description at Teesworks.

Water

Cooling can use large volumes of potable water. UK operators are not required to disclose water use, so most dossiers here show water as not disclosed, not as zero. Full method note: methodology § conversion factors.

UK. An April 2026 Global Action Plan analysis reported that about 84% of proposed UK data centres sit in areas already water-stressed or projected to be by 2040 (Water Magazine). Affinity Water has said some proposed centres in its region have requested up to about three million litres a day, and Water UK warns that the sector’s demand is not built into national water planning (Guardian, Jul 2026).

US. In The Dalles, Oregon, a public-records fight over Google’s data-centre water use ended in a 2022 settlement that forced disclosure; later reporting showed Google taking a large share of city water as campuses expanded (Oregonian, Dec 2022; Oregon Capital Chronicle, Jan 2026). Treat these as precedents for disclosure politics, not as identical hydrology to the region.

Mitigations on record here: Deep Green Bradford claims closed-loop cooling with up to 95% heat reuse into the Bradford Energy Network and zero water use; air or outside-air cooling is claimed at Skelton Grange and Wilton International. All are claims until metered. Waterless on site still shifts water to the power station through higher electricity use.

Jobs and the local economy

Promoters emphasise capital investment, business rates, and construction employment. Some publish permanent job estimates: the applicant for Elsham Tech Park claims over 600 permanent jobs after construction (summarised in the North Lincolnshire committee report, PA/2025/643); Humber Tech Park’s planning statement estimates about 370 jobs when fully operational; and Latos announced 150 (Teesside Live). These are applicant figures, not measured headcounts, and they are small relative to the land and power take. Several schemes also sit inside AI Growth Zone bids that promise regional jobs (AI Growth Zone overlay).

Benefit side. The same facilities underpin cloud and AI services used across the wider economy. That benefit is real. It is also spread thin: rates and construction jobs stay local, but most of the digital gain is used nationally. We do not score “net public value” on this site.

Noise and health

Continuous cooling plant and periodic diesel (or other) generator testing are among the impacts residents cite most often in objections elsewhere. Emissions from testing add an air-quality concern beside noise.

US. Suburban complaints in Northern Virginia and places such as Chandler, Arizona, have turned on overnight noise and generator exercises. The pattern is useful: once campuses sit beside housing, acoustic conditions become a planning lever. Here, objectors to Elsham Tech Park raised noise from 24/7 operations and low-frequency noise and hum (North Lincolnshire committee report PA/2025/643).

Mitigations: planning conditions on plant enclosure, hours for generator testing, acoustic barriers, and (where proposed) HVO or electric backup. Check each dossier’s planning documents rather than assuming a regional standard.

Land

The build-out here splits between brownfield reuse of retired coal-power sites (Skelton Grange, Eggborough, Ferrybridge, Teesworks, aql Leeds) and farmland schemes on the fringe (Elsham, Humber Tech Park). Across sites that disclose an area, farmland accounts for about 623 acres and ex-industrial land about 203. Brownfield-first is the usual mitigation in policy language; loss of farmland, especially best and most versatile land, is decided case by case.

The land question. A consent commits a piece of land to one long-term use. A scheme can turn working farmland into a fenced, single-use site that takes large power and water, against permanent job numbers that are applicant estimates (jobs). Elsham Tech Park would permanently take over 430 acres, roughly 140 hectares of it best and most versatile farmland (grades 1, 2 and 3a), for up to 1 GW of IT load (North Lincolnshire Council committee report PA/2025/643). Once built it is hard to undo; a hall of racks and cooling plant does not go back to being a field.

Rival claims on scarce capacity. Land, grid headroom, and water are shared resources, and a data centre’s claim on each one competes with other uses. At Teesworks the data-centre campus land overlapped BP’s H2Teesside hydrogen scheme; both were framed as nationally significant until BP withdrew H2Teesside in December 2025 (BBC). Farmland, once consented, is spent: the objections at Elsham turn on the permanent loss of productive best-and-most-versatile land (PA/2025/643).

Who carries the cost. The local costs concentrate: the farmland itself, the noise, the traffic, and sometimes water use fall on the immediate area. Most of the benefit is national: the cloud and AI capacity these sites host is used across the economy, not mainly nearby (jobs). Opponents call this a land-justice problem.

Benefits. The strongest case here is the brownfield route. Reusing retired coal-power land — Skelton Grange, Eggborough, and Ferrybridge — puts derelict industrial sites and their existing grid connections back to work, and raises no farmland question at all. Clustering compute near that infrastructure can also lower connection cost.

How the region compares with the US

Single US AI and cloud campuses are often quoted in the multi-gigawatt range, and Loudoun County’s data-centre consumption alone was about 5.33 GW in 2025 (Turner, citing Dominion). The mapped schemes here add up to about 1.8 GW of stated size on paper, none of it yet running; 1,384 MW of that is in planning documents and the rest is operator figures. The largest single figure is Elsham’s 1 GW IT-load parameter, a ceiling in an application not yet decided, not a running load. The region is smaller per site and more constrained on farmland and grid headroom, so friction such as farmland loss, grid reuse, and land conflicts like Teesworks shows up at lower absolute megawatts.

Metric caution: both sides are cluster-scale, but they are not the same measurement. The regional figure adds stated sizes for schemes that are proposed, in planning or approved; no running site here publishes a figure. Loudoun’s is power consumed across the county cluster in 2025, as reported by Supervisor Turner from Dominion data. Read it as scale, not a like-for-like league table.