The City Council Hurtsmer, according to The Register, approved the construction of a data processing megaccenter in Hartfordshire (Great Britain). It is expected that the objects will be commissioned approximately by 2030.
We are talking about the project of the company DC01 UK Ltd., information about which appeared in September 2024. The total area of the data center facilities will be approximately 186 thousand m2, the area of the campus will be about 34 hectares. The site is close to the M25 and A1 and is adjacent to the South Mimms motorway.
It is expected that the future site will become Europe’s largest data center for AI and cloud services. The data center land has proximity to national and international fiber routes. A reserve capacity of 400 MVA is provided from the National Grid. During the construction phase, at least 500 jobs will be created, and after commissioning, 200 permanent jobs will appear.
Image source: DC01 UK
It is argued that the project will not only satisfy the national need for the capacities of the data centers, but will also contribute to the development of local infrastructure. In particular, financial contributions will go to improve bus messages and bicycle paths. The heat generated by the equipment of the data center will be used to heating new houses and enterprises.
The project implementation is estimated at £3.75 billion ($4.9 billion). However, DC01 UK will not be involved in the construction or operation of buildings: the company’s role is to obtain planning rights and prepare for the construction of objects. The end user of the data center will be a certain “well-known hyperscaler,” whose name has not been disclosed. The Register reached out to AWS, Google, Microsoft and Meta✴ with questions, but those companies declined to comment.
«Since the announcement of the project in September last year, we have received a wide response from market participants. At the moment, active negotiations are underway, which will be completed in the near future. We will make a further announcement in due course,” a DC01 UK spokesperson said.
It should be noted that many companies express a desire to develop data centers in the UK. In particular, Cloud HQ, CyrusOne, CoreWeave and ServiceNow intend to invest £6.3 billion ($8.22 billion) in British data center infrastructure. The American investment company Blackstone is going to invest up to £10 billion ($13.4 billion) in a large-scale AI data center in this country. AWS is ready to spend £8 billion ($10.45 billion) to expand its cloud business in the UK. At the same time, the country’s authorities classified data centers as elements of critical national infrastructure (CNI).