World's first gas powered data centre could be built off Great Yarmouth coast
Plans have been submitted by Orcadian Energy
Last updated 17th Jul 2026
The world’s first offshore, gas-powered data centre could be built off the coast of Norfolk.
Orcadian Energy, a London-listed oil and gas explorer, has unveiled plans to build a power station and AI data centre in the sea 65 miles off Great Yarmouth.
The firm says the site would look to sell capacity to the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft, while avoiding adding further pressure on the UK’s power grid, at a time of surging demand from data centres.
Orcadian holds the licence for the Earlham gas field in that area of the North Sea, and wants to build a single offshore platform to extract gas from there and a neighbouring field called Orwell.
That gas would then be piped to an adjacent platform housing the power station itself, generating electricity for a purpose-built AI data centre nearby.
None of it would connect back to the National Grid.
Instead of a power cable running to shore, the site would send and receive only data, via undersea fibre cables.
The CO2 produced by burning the gas would be captured on site and pumped straight back under the seabed rather than released into the atmosphere, a process Orcadian says makes the case for this being one of the greenest data centres in the country.
A third platform would house the data centre, initially planned at 200 megawatts, with the company setting out a longer-term vision of a wider network of similar rigs delivering up to a gigawatt between them.
Part of the commercial logic is that the gas at Earlham already carries an unusually high proportion of CO2, making it expensive to clean up for conventional use.
Stephen Brown, Orcadian’s chief executive, told the Telegraph: “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.”
He added: “This development concept for Earlham, focused on generating low-carbon power offshore to supply an offshore data centre, can be transformational.
“This project is one which we believe supports the government’s vision of a clean UK power system in 2030, whilst also delivering on the government’s energy security goals and crucially enabling the construction of a gigascale data centre.”
Orcadian has also pitched the offshore model as a way of avoiding the fierce planning battles that onshore data centres have triggered elsewhere in the country over land use, noise and power draw, saying its approach would allow facilities to be built “far from anyone’s backyard”.
The plans come amid a fierce backlash to proposals to build a data centre in Keswick, Norwich.
Hundreds of locals have signed a petition opposing the proposed 150MW facility, raising concerns about the water usage and energy demands required by data centres.
The North Sea data centre is one of a number of energy schemes on the Yarmouth coast.
Peel Ports has invested around £70m in the town port’s Northern Terminal and earmarked a further £60m for its Southern Terminal, work explicitly designed to help the area serve hydrogen, carbon capture, offshore wind and nuclear projects alongside its existing business.
Vattenfall and RWE have also both chosen Yarmouth as the operations and maintenance base for the Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone, and ScottishPower Renewables picked the port for pre-assembly work on its £4bn East Anglia Two windfarm.