A British energy company is planning to build what is thought to be the world’s first offshore, gas-powered data centre in the North Sea.
Orcadian Energy, a London-listed oil and gas exploration business, revealed the proposals for a power station and AI data centre 65 miles off the coast of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
It is preparing to build new platforms over the Earlham gas field, whose output would fuel the power station supplying electricity to the data centre.
The CO2 generated from burning the gas would then be pumped straight back under the seabed, which the company claimed would make the data centre one of Britain’s greenest.
Orcadian, an AIM-listed business that holds a licence for the gas field, said it planned to sell capacity to data giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, adding that the scheme would also avoid adding further pressure on the UK power grid from surging data centre demand.
Stephen Brown, Orcadian’s chief executive, said: “Demand for compute, driven by the artificial intelligence revolution, has upended electricity demand forecasts around the world.
“We believe offshore power stations coupled with offshore data centres could help to satisfy part of that demand.”
Under the plans, gas would be extracted from the Earlham reservoir and a nearby field called Orwell via a single offshore platform, then piped to an adjacent structure housing a power station.
The CO2 generated by burning the gas would then be captured and pumped back beneath the seabed, while the electricity would power a 200-megawatt data centre on a third platform.
Unlike a typical gas field, which requires a pipeline back to the mainland, the Earlham site would not need to be directly connected to the grid; instead, it would transmit data back via cables.
Orcadian said the concept would also mean data centres could be built “far from anyone’s backyard” amid growing protests against vast new technology hubs being constructed around the world.
