The British energy regulator plans to stop firms from reserving electricity capacity for “speculative” projects
British energy regulator Ofgem on Wednesday proposed fees and stricter rules for AI data center developers to cull “unviable, stalled or speculative projects” that are taking up scarce grid capacity amid skyrocketing electricity demand.
It comes as the UK moves to grow its cloud computing and artificial intelligence industries but grapples with a sharp spike in grid connection requests – which Ofgem says have more than tripled in less than a year.
The amount of electricity capacity being sought by firms wanting to plug into the UK’s grid spiked from 41 gigawatts to 125 gigawatts between November 2024 and June 2025, driven largely by demand from data center projects, the regulator said in a press release on Wednesday.
The figure is nearly triple the UK’s 2025 peak electricity demand of around 46 gigawatts.
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