Drax's Planned Data Center Would Burn Nearly 5 Million Metric Tons of Wood a Year

The company has said it is developing options for a 1.2-gigawatt data center. Only 100 megawatts would come from the grid. The other 1.1 gigawatts would come from Drax's own power station, which burns wood pellets shipped in from overseas forests, including around five million tonnes per year from the United States. Drax says the site could be running at this scale by 2031.

We started with Drax's own 2025 results. Last year, the plant burned about 7.7 million metric tons of wood to make 15 million megawatt-hours of electricity, releasing 14 million metric tons of CO2. We applied those rates to a 1.1-gigawatt data center running around the clock, which is how we assume that facility would operate.

We rounded Drax's emissions rate down in our math, so the real figure is likely higher.

UK accounting rules treat the carbon from burning wood as zero, on the theory that new trees will soak it back up. Drax would say that the emissions it releases today—and from any future data center—are effectively zero. But that carbon enters the air the moment the wood burns, and research shows regrowth can take decades or centuries to make up the difference. The climate crisis is running on today's emissions, not a century-long IOU.

This would be one of the dirtiest data centers out there. Most UK data centers plan to use electricity from the grid, build their own renewables, or have their own gas generation on site. Burning wood is far dirtier per unit of electricity than burning gas. But the bioenergy industry claims the electricity it generates is zero carbon, and it is wrongly given billions of pounds every year by the UK government in low-carbon subsidies. The government must urgently set minimum standards for data centers and rule out dirty energy generation like burning trees.

The UK is facing a wave of data center demand, with 315 projects waiting to connect to the grid. How the country powers them will decide whether it can meet its legally binding climate targets. Burning forests should not be part of the answer.

1. Drax’s 2025 full-year results (published 2026) state that it wants to build its own data centre, eventually providing at least 1.1GW of “behind the meter” capacity.

2. Drax’s emissions intensity has been calculated based on its 2025 annual report. 

   1. In 2025, Drax generated 15 million megawatt hours of electricity, releasing 14 million tonnes of CO2.

   2. This translates into an emissions intensity of 0.9 Mt CO2/MWh.

   3. For a data center, it is assumed that 1.1 GW of capacity would need to run at a constant rate for all hours of the year. A year is 8,760 hours, translating into 9,636,000 MWh.

   4. 9,636,000 MWh with an emissions intensity of 0.9 Mt CO2/MWh would release 8.6 million tonnes of CO2.

3. Drax’s wood use has been calculated based on its 2025 annual report.

   1. In 2025, Drax generated 15 million megawatt hours of electricity, using 7,739,645 tonnes of wood.

   2. This means that to produce 1 MWh of electricity, Drax needed 0.515 tonnes of wood.

   3. Meaning that to produce 9,636,000 MWh of electricity, Drax would need 4.9 million tonnes of wood.