Markets and policy
-
Nvidia backs OpenAI’s 8GW Ohio campus
Nvidia will invest $1.5bn in SB Energy and provide financial support for OpenAI’s long-term lease at the PORTS-Pike campus, linking chip supply, project finance, power infrastructure, and tenant credit at unprecedented scale.
-
Amazon explores grid link for private power campus
Amazon says its 8,000-acre Pecos County AI campus is designed to move from private generation towards grid-connected service, potentially turning onsite supply into a resource that could also support other ERCOT customers.
-
NSW links faster approvals to infrastructure rules
New South Wales will offer 75-day assessments to qualifying data centre projects that meet energy, water, environmental, community, and skills requirements, while moving to recover network and water infrastructure costs from operators.
-
Who reports the incident when nobody sees the whole stack?
New resilience rules are putting data centre incidents under closer scrutiny, but colocation divides control across operators, customers, and suppliers, complicating who can see, classify, and explain a serious disruption.
-
England planning rules strengthen data centre support
England’s new National Planning Policy Framework explicitly links data centre development with generating capacity, grid connections, water infrastructure, and AI Growth Zones, embedding physical infrastructure requirements more firmly in national planning policy.
-
Scotland tightens oversight of 50MW data centres
Scottish planning authorities must now notify ministers within seven days of validating data centre applications above 50MW, adding national oversight as the government examines the infrastructure and environmental effects of the development pipeline.
-
European AI colocation signings hit 420MW
AI-focused colocation signings across Europe reached 420MW in the first half of 2026, with two-thirds of contracted capacity heading to Nordic markets as operators become more comfortable with neocloud counterparty risk.
-
Europe’s data centre boom fails Balfour Beatty’s margin test
Balfour Beatty is declining to pursue UK and continental European data centre construction at current margins, despite securing substantial new work through its expanding US buildings business.
-
Drought puts data centre water connections under strain
Water constraints are reaching proposed data centre developments in southern England as drought forces utilities to examine large new connection requests against an already stressed supply system.
-
Larbert opposition moves into security planning
Police Scotland has urged security planning around Apatura’s proposed 300MW Larbert campus as sustained opposition brings physical access and disruption into an already contested planning process.