Data centres in the East of England: electricity use and sites

In 2024, data centres in the East of England used 339 GWh (0.34 TWh) of electricity from the grid. That was 1.4% of all grid electricity consumed in the area src.

The trend, 2020 to 2024

Gigawatt-hours of grid electricity used by data centres each year, and that use as a share of all grid electricity in the East of England. Source: DESNZ src.

Use went from 327 GWh in 2020 to 339 GWh in 2024, up 4%, while the share of local electricity moved from 1.3% to 1.4%. DESNZ counted 15 operational data centres here in 2020 and 16 in 2024 src. Across Great Britain, data centre use rose 41% over the same period.

How the East of England ranks

The East of England used 7.6% of all data centre electricity in Great Britain in 2024 (339 of 4,460 GWh). Among the 8 areas DESNZ splits Great Britain into, it ranks 5th for total data centre electricity and 4th for the share of local electricity going to data centres src. For comparison, data centres used 1.8% of grid electricity across Great Britain as a whole.

1. South East: 1,785 GWh, 5.1% of local electricity
2. Outer London: 1,169 GWh, 7.1% of local electricity
3. Inner London: 489 GWh, 2.7% of local electricity
4. South West and Wales: 372 GWh, 1.1% of local electricity
5. East of England: 339 GWh, 1.4% of local electricity
6. The North: 166 GWh, 0.3% of local electricity
7. The Midlands: 87 GWh, 0.2% of local electricity
8. Scotland: 51 GWh, 0.2% of local electricity

What that much electricity means

339 GWh is about the yearly electricity of 136,000 typical UK homes, at Ofgem's 2,500 kWh a year for a medium home src. DESNZ's two figures also imply that all grid users in the East of England used about 23,634 GWh in 2024 (data centre use ÷ its share).

Derived: homes = data centre kWh ÷ 2,500 kWh, rounded to 3 significant figures. Implied area total = data centre GWh ÷ share. Share of GB = area GWh ÷ GB data centre GWh.

Mapped data centre sites

OpenStreetMap and Wikidata have 21 data centre sites mapped inside the East of England's boundary src src, 18 of them with a name: BT Computer Centre, CityFibre Cabinets, Colt London North Data Centre, Fujitsu Data Centre, Google Datacentre Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire Data Centre, Imperium 315, Kao Data KLON-02, NTT, NTT Hemel Hempstead 2, NTT Hemel Hempstead 3, NTT Hemel Hempstead 4, Positive Park, Redcentric Cambridge, Starwood House, The Chess Building, US Air Force, West Cambridge Data Centre.

Sites placed by point-in-polygon against ONS local authority boundaries src. Community-mapped sites aren't the same list as DESNZ's count (which only includes colocation and hyperscale data centres with matched meters), so the two numbers differ. OpenStreetMap snapshot: 21 September 2026. Missing one? Add it to OpenStreetMap. See them on the map.

Announced projects

1. 2025-09-16 Microsoft commits $30bn to the UK by 2028, including the UK's largest AI supercomputer with Nscale at Loughton (50 MW, scalable to 90 MW) planned src
2. 2025-09-16 Google opens Waltham Cross data centre as part of a two-year £5bn UK investment open src
3. 2025-06 Google applies for a data centre campus at Thurrock (south of the M25/A13 junction); still being considered by Thurrock Council proposed src

Full tracker →

Nearby and related areas

• Data centres in Outer London: 1,169 GWh
• Data centres in the South East: 1,785 GWh
• Data centres in the Midlands: 87 GWh
• Data centres in Slough: 1,293 GWh
• Data centres in Hillingdon: 536 GWh
• Data centres in Tower Hamlets: 430 GWh

All UK areas, sortable →