The data center news agenda for 2025 was set just weeks into the new year when a UK government report was published. Action Plan for AI Capabilities political document. The document details the government's push to rapidly increase the capacity of the nation's artificial intelligence data center infrastructure as part of a wider attempt to position the UK as an artificial intelligence superpower.
The government's contribution will be the creation of a number of AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) in parts of the country where access to energy and minimal planning restrictions will be guaranteed, making them ideal locations for AI data centers. Fast forward to the end of 2025 and the government has confirmed several AIGZ sites, with more expected to be announced over the next year.
Having promised to lower barriers to data center planning in its 2024 election manifesto, the government has courted controversy by approving a number of projects that the previous administration had rejected, while also backing a rise in its fair share of new projects this year.
As the UK moves towards building more data centres, there continue to be concerns about the impact all this growth will have on the country's energy security, as well as calls for operators to do more to ensure they operate their sites in an environmentally sustainable manner.
With all that in mind, here are Computer Weekly's top 10 data center stories of 2025.
Within a few days after AI Capability Action Plan paper will fall in January 2025Questions have been asked about whether the UK government has what it takes to turn its rhetoric of developing artificial intelligence data centers paving the way for massive economic growth into reality.
As reported by Computer Weekly, UK technology market watchers have raised concerns about how the government's plans will be funded and questioned whether the creation of artificial intelligence data centers will lead to adoption of the technology by public and private sector organisations.
Energy security concerns have been a long-standing topic in the UK data center sector, particularly over the last decade as demand for computing power from hyperscale clouds and internet giants has soared.
However, with the UK government pushing for large-scale AI data center campuses to be used to host extremely energy-intensive workloads, these concerns have increased markedly over the past year.
As the UK comes under pressure to decarbonise its network while simultaneously meeting the growing energy needs of a growing number of data centres, The debate over how best to balance both of these pressures has raged throughout 2025..
While some data center operators appear to be trending toward building ever-larger data centers and server farms to meet the UK's growing AI computing needs, others have floated alternative ideas on how to achieve the same thing.
It was prompted by concerns that the UK only has a limited amount of suitable space to build huge artificial intelligence campuses, prompting calls to explore smaller-scale, more innovative builds. Among the ideas put forward was the idea repurposing UK commercial properties and office space into data centers.
Like any market experiencing a growth spurt, questions about how long the data center boom will last have dogged the sector this year as stories emerged of some hyperscalers pulling out of projects.
In March 2025, a story emerged that Microsoft had allegedly canceled and delayed a number of data center lease agreements in both the US and Europe over the previous months.
Property consultancy CBRE also published a report in November 2025 which highlighted waning appetites hyperscale cloud companies to host facilities across Europe.
Elsewhere, local authorities and businesses appeared keen to get involved in the UK government's efforts to develop artificial intelligence data centres, as it emerged that more than 200 local authorities had submitted expressions of interest for their areas to become AIGZs in April 2025.
The government initially said it would announce which of these bids were successful by the summer of 2025, but it was only in the fall that it began publishing details of where exactly there will be a first wave of AIGZ with Wales and the North East of England emerging as winners..
The government's election manifesto, published ahead of the new administration taking office in July 2024, hailed data centers as an emerging sector that it would champion for economic growth.
As such, commitments have been made to reduce barriers to data center planning to encourage operators to build more of them in the UK. plus promises to consider projects that the previous government refused to plan.
This year the government delivered on both of those promises, although in implementing the latter it was accused of ignoring environmental concerns and the wishes of local communities in reversing some of those planning decisions.
A study by data center resilience think tank Uptime Institute found this year that data center operators appear to be becoming more lax when it comes to collecting data on the resiliency of their sites.
organizations 15th annual Uptime Institute Global Data Center Study found that in the 12 months to July 2025, the amount of sustainability data collected by operators across almost all indicators remained stagnant or even decreased.
In autumn 2024, details emerged of a plan by a newly formed company called DC01UK to build a £3.75 billion hyperscale data center on a piece of green belt land in Hertfordshire. At the time, the project was billed as one of the largest projects of its kind in Europe.
The government has trumpeted that this project is exactly the kind of initiative its data center efforts are designed to support. despite the fact that the company controlling it has only been operating since July 2024..
Fast forward to January 2025 and news emerged that the project, despite significant local opposition, had received planning permission, and in October 2025 it was revealed that colocation giant Equinix had acquired the site and planned to invest £3.9 billion in its development.
With the AI ​​data center bubble showing no signs of bursting by the end of 2025, IT market watcher Gartner has shared some sobering predictions about the impact all this growth will have on global power supply and demand trends over the next five years.
Data center energy demand is projected to grow 16% in 2025 and double by 2030. At the same time, Gartner analysts estimate that the amount of electricity consumed by the global data center market will reach 448 terrawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025.and will grow to 980 TWh by 2030, with most of this energy consumed by power-hungry AI workloads hosted in these data centers.
Meanwhile in the UK, the National Grid has this year launched several projects and technology partnerships aimed at strengthening the UK's energy security. These include investments that will increase the capacity of key substations located near established data centers. including West London and Oxfordshire.
In September 2025, National Grid also laid out plans to pilot technology that promises to allow artificial intelligence (AI) data centers to flexibly regulate the amount of energy they draw from the grid, as part of efforts to reduce the potential strain these facilities place on the UK's power supplies.
The work is part of National Grid's planned five-year, £35 billion investment project to increase the UK's electricity generation capacity and make it easier to connect data centers and gigafactories to the grid.
