Powered Land and Zombie Projects: Real Estate in the Age of AI

How AI Data Centers Are Transforming UK Real Estate and Powered Land

By Lucy Raitano and Kate Holton

The Rise of AI Data Centers and Their Impact on UK Real Estate

WILTON, England, April 24 (Reuters) - Land left dormant by the decline of the chemical industry in northeastern England has taken on a new lustre. Blessed with power plants, water and a grid connection, the site has just what it takes to house a start-of-the-art AI data center campus.

That's what the owners of the Wilton International site in Teesside hope at least, but they are not alone.

Across Britain, owners of industrial sites, speculative investors, property developers and even farmers are burnishing the credentials of their land to cash in on the billions of dollars tech giants plan to spend on AI data centers.

Surge in Data Center Developments

According to construction analytics group Barbour ABI, plans for 119 data centers have been submitted, on sites as varied as a disused car plant, an old paint factory, a former Travelodge hotel and a retail centre near Heathrow Airport.

Momentum grew last year after King Charles hosted Donald Trump and tech bosses at a banquet during the U.S. president's visit, with companies including Google, Microsoft and Nvidia all pledging to invest billions in Britain's digital infrastructure.

The AI gold rush has spawned a whole new industry around data center wannabees, upended land valuations and created a logjam in the lengthy queue for grid connections, according to more than 20 interviews with data center operators, advisers, lawyers and investors.

"The demand that's come through in the last couple of years - really because of AI - has exploded," said Andrew Groves at real estate adviser Bidwells. "Speculators and promoters have obviously seen it as an opportunity to make greater returns."

Changing Requirements for Data Centers

While the financial services industry needs data centers to be nearby for the sake of speed, when it comes to artificial intelligence, the main requirement is processing power - which means AI data centers can be based further afield.

That has the potential to breathe life into cheaper industrial sites in Britain far from London's elevated property prices and has also piqued the interest of rural landowners hoping a data center might pay better than farming.

The Concept of 'Powered Land'

Wilton as a Case Study

'POWERED LAND'

Wilton is one such site. The majority owner, utilities company Sembcorp UK, has been serving petrochemical customers for decades but the decline of the industry has now left it with spare land - and power.

The site is what's being dubbed "powered land" - a plot that either has its own power generation or an existing high-voltage grid connection, or both.

Working with data center developer Digital Reef, Sembcorp hopes to land a big tech firm - maybe a so-called hyperscaler - as a tenant to help build out a data center on the site, which is in one of the most economically deprived parts of Britain.

"We're trying to develop something quite quickly, and bring jobs and industry and investment back," said Mike Patrick, CEO of Sembcorp UK, a subsidiary of Singapore's Sembcorp Industries.

The Role of Hyperscalers

Hyperscalers are companies offering huge amounts of cloud computing capacity, including for AI, such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft - and they need a lot of power.

"Wilton is almost uniquely placed in that it already has a large grid connection and on-site power assets," said Sembcorp UK Business Development Director Peter Ireton. "We think we can attract a large off-taker."

Grid Connection Challenges

But many sites with data center ambitions have no power.

That's why there has been an explosion in applications for grid connections. Coupled with the need for upgrades to transmission circuits, the demand has pushed wait times for a connection out to 12 to 15 years.

Britain's energy department said demand for connections leapt 460% in the first six months of 2025. Requests to join the high-voltage network rocketed to 96 gigawatts of capacity - with another 29 GW of demands to join local networks.

For context, Britain's total generation capacity is estimated to be about 72 GW, though last year's peak demand was just under 46 GW.

The National Energy System Operator said in March it had identified 140 data centers in the main queue, representing about 50 GW of capacity.

It said that suggested speculative activity was boosting demand far beyond what the network can support and, in turn, delaying viable projects and slowing the energy transition.

Some requests are from owners of land which has neither power, planning permission nor a potential end user. Dubbed "zombie projects", they're clogging up the system.

"You've been seeing an awful lot of people speculating, spending time trying to get power onto a site," said Tom Glover, head of data centers for EMEA at U.S. real estate firm JLL.

Aware of the issue, NESO launched plans in March to amend its application process to weed out speculative applications and prioritise strategic sectors, including data centers. A similar move last year to tidy up the queue for clean power projects wanting to join the grid cut those requests by half.

Rising Land Values and Power Premiums

Getting Creative with Power

GETTING CREATIVE WITH POWER

Brokers said land with a power supply suitable for a data center has long carried a premium but AI demand and grid congestion has pushed it higher over the past few years.

According to British real estate company Savills, London industrial land can sell for between 4.5 and 6 million pounds an acre. Savills and two other sources said that jumps to between 8 and 15 million pounds for land suitable for a data center.

It's a similar story in the United States.

According to a March report by real estate adviser Colliers, powered land is being sold for up to two and half times more than other industrial land - and that multiple jumps to over three times in northern Virginia and northern California.

Other developers have had to be creative when it comes to getting power in Brit