The Renewable Energy Association (REA), a non-profit trade body for UK renewables and cleantech organisations, has officially launched its Data Centre Coalition to advocate for clean, scalable power backing UK data centres.

With the UK Government positioning AI and data centres at the heart of its national campaign for economic growth, the REA said that the Coalition was being introduced at a critical moment, giving industry a unified voice in the development of investable clean models to power the tech boom.

The Coalition’s founding members, including Enfinium, Greenscale, Apatura, and Clarke Energy, are aiming to nudge both government and regulators using an evidence-based approach to establish policy certainty for the sector.

Some of the issues that the Coalition hopes to sway lie around low-carbon capacity delivery, pricing reform, slow planning, and how environmental concerns are impacting the pace and viability of new projects.

On the hunt for more partners, the REA said that founding members will influence national policy by engaging in early dialogue with ministers, regulators and investors and help build the models that will underpin the UK’s digital competitiveness.

“On behalf of our 400 members, we felt it was essential to step forward at this pivotal moment,” said Trevor Hutchings, REA chief executive.

“The UK is in a global race to secure data centre investment, and to meet the sector’s rapidly growing energy demand alongside addressing wider sustainability challenges. 

“Our Data Centre Coalition provides the collective strength to engage directly at the highest levels of government. It ensures that decisions are informed by the full expertise and evidence from the organisations delivering the infrastructure on which the UK’s digital and economic ambitions depend.”  

Multiple hyperscale data centre projects have been announced of late, including a £15 billion network of three ‘green’ AI hubs across Scotland’s central belt, with the government set to designate them as essential services, ramping up controls and regulatory requirements for their operational resilience.

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The rapid build rate is evidence of how important data centres have become to the economy, with recent government analysis suggesting the UK’s data centre capacity could grow to between 3.3 GW and 6.3 GW in the next five years, depending on policy decisions, though even this may fall short of demand.

The issue of how to power data centres, however, remains under debate, with the sheer number of planned builds making it unclear how much energy they will actually require. Currently, data centres consume around 2.5% of the UK’s electricity, a figure expected to grow fourfold by 2030.

Clean, renewable power is therefore seen by many as essential for the future of data centres. The Scottish Government, for one, has designated green data centres as a “national development” for their role in supporting digital connectivity.