The data centre industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, driven by the global demand for digital connectivity. While challenges like power grid capacity, planning processes, and community engagement require thoughtful navigation, they also present exciting opportunities for innovation and collaboration. Developers are rising to the occasion, crafting the resilient infrastructure that will power our increasingly connected future. At the recent "Building the Future Conference," Rennie Dalrymple, head of Data Centres at Ridge, sat down with fellow industry veterans to unpack these challenges and explore what the future holds.

Joining him were Stephen Bradley, New Business Director at JMS Group, who specialises in the complexities of connecting massive facilities to the electricity grid; Iain Macdonald, Future Energy Systems Lead at HKS, bringing fresh thinking on sustainable design and emerging energy technologies; and Martin Wright, Chief Architect at Pure Data Centres Group, who operates live facilities everywhere from Jakarta to Dublin. Together, they represented the full spectrum of expertise needed to tackle the sector’s toughest questions.  

The power puzzle 

If there’s one issue keeping data centre developers up at night, it’s getting connected to the electricity grid. Stephen Bradley painted a vivid picture of just how much the stakes have changed.

When he started working in this corner of the industry around 2005, a typical data centre needed about 25 MVA of power. The Olympic Park application around that time? About 70 MVA. “So data centres were about a third the size of the Olympic Park,” he noted. “But now we’re seeing data centres growing probably to about double the size of the Olympic Park.” 

Here’s the frustrating bit: there’s actually spare capacity on the UK’s networks – around 12 gigawatts of it. The problem? It’s not always where developers need it. Bradley and his colleagues are working with network operators to develop smarter, more flexible approaches. One promising solution is the “managed ramp profile,” which lets data centres scale up their power consumption gradually as they come online, rather than demanding the full 150 megawatts from day one. 

But as Bradley pointed out, this isn’t yet a standard offering. “It’s not like a recognised product in the market,” he said. “I think it’d need a wider sharing of that knowledge and a more robust process.” In other words, you need to know the right questions to ask – something that shouldn’t require insider knowledge. 

Martin Wright, whose company Pure Data Centres specialises in tough markets like central London and Paris, knows these constraints all too well. “Sites are scarce, power is limited, but the demand, particularly with our hyperscale customers, is great,” he explained. It’s a high-wire act: investing hundreds of millions where infrastructure is stretched thin, banking on the fact that some customers simply can’t go anywhere else. 

Cool under pressure: New technologies 

Technology isn’t standing still while developers wrestle with infrastructure challenges. Dalrymple highlighted liquid cooling as a game-changer, driven by increasingly powerful computer chips that pack more punch into smaller spaces. This is reshaping everything about how facilities are designed and operated. 

Then there’s the rise of “edge” facilities – compact but powerful data centres serving local areas. Dalrymple floated an intriguing idea:

What if you replaced the Starbucks in the bottom of a skyscraper with a node, an edge facility, and then use that to gain value not only for the owner, but also all the users in that building? It’s the kind of creative thinking the industry needs as space becomes scarcer and latency requirements tighten. 

The AI elephant in the room 

No conversation about data centres is complete without mentioning artificial intelligence. Everyone on the panel acknowledged that AI is driving massive projected growth, but there’s a lot of uncertainty about how it all plays out. 

Wright put it frankly: “I think the general projection is that we’re going to see continuous exponential growth in capacity both for cloud services and for AI machine learning. The challenge is that people aren’t quite sure how to monetise AI.” There’s a race to build capacity, but will the business models catch up? 

Dalrymple offered another angle worth considering: Do these facilities actually need 100 megawatts constantly, or does demand fluctuate between 40 and 70? Unlike traditional colocation services that need 99.99% uptime, large language model training can tolerate interruptions. “If it’s doing some scraping, you can go dark for a while, and then you come up,” he noted. This variability could open doors to more flexible grid arrangements and even allow data centres to feed power back during quieter periods. 

Being good neighbours 

One of the more encouraging themes from the discussion was the growing emphasis on community integration. Data centres have sometimes been seen as hulking, power-hungry boxes that give little back. The panellists were eager to challenge that perception. 

Heat recovery is the poster child for this shift. A Ridge project in London could potentially warm 15,000 homes using waste heat from the data centre. “Data centres not only give employment, but they also give energy and technology and quality to communities that need it,” Dalrymple said. 

Wright explained the practicalities from an operator’s perspective: “The cost of putting in additional infrastructure on site – the heat exchangers to take it to our site boundary – is relatively low in the grand scheme of things.” Pure Data Centres has made it policy not to use processed water in their facilities, and they’re exploring heat recovery across nearly all their locations. 

But there’s a catch. The infrastructure on the data centre side is the easy part. The challenge lies beyond the fence line, where you need district heating networks, willing offtakers, and coordinated investment from local authorities. Wright admitted they’ve found it “very difficult to make district heating work” in some areas, despite installing all the necessary infrastructure as part of planning conditions. 

The missing piece? Often it’s heat pumps to boost the temperature. Data centres typically return hot water at 30-35°C, but district heating networks need it at 60°C or higher. Higher temperatures mean smaller pipes and more practical infrastructure, but the heat pumps need space – and data centre sites are typically squeezed for every square metre. 

Energy’s nuclear future? 

Perhaps the most eye-catching prediction came from Dalrymple: before 2030, we’ll see commercially available micro nuclear reactors producing 1-15 megawatts. “You can move these in shipping containers – the turbine, the whole thing – to any site. They run for 70 years,” he explained. “Then we can say goodbye to the generator, the fuel tanks, the emissions, the noise. Game changers, if we’re willing to go down that road.” 

It sounds like science fiction, but Dalrymple was quick to point out the technology isn’t new – submarines have used similar light water reactors for 15 years. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) at 200 megawatts are also on the horizon, with build times that align well with data centre development schedules. 

Bradley added that in the meantime, immediate solutions are being deployed. Private wire arrangements are connecting solar farms directly to data centres, bypassing grid constraints. Battery energy storage systems are being integrated into sites, though Wright noted these come with their own challenges around space and insurance concerns with lithium-ion technology.  

1. The planning permission marathon 

Government rhetoric about supporting data centre development sounds great, but Dalrymple noted the reality on the ground is slower to change. There isn’t even a specific planning use class for data centres, which can lead to absurd requirements – like mandating loads of car parking spaces for facilities that might have a dozen staff on site. 

A national planning policy statement specifically for data centres is in the works, which should help. But the timeline remains daunting: two years for planning consent, another two for construction. “You’ve got a four-year lifecycle,” Wright added, “and the tech is evolving the whole time. You’ve got a lot of capital deployed in quite an immovable asset.” 

It’s this mismatch – between the glacial pace of planning and construction versus the rapid evolution of technology -that creates real headaches for developers trying to future-proof their investments. 

2. Busting the energy myths 

Both Dalrymple and Wright pushed back hard against the narrative that data centres are environmental villains. Yes, they use power – lots of it – but there’s important context. 

“If the compute wasn’t in data centres being super efficient, and it was dispersed the way it might have been 20 years ago, the amount of energy involved would be phenomenal,” Dalrymple argued. Wright agreed: “Industrialising computers and putting them in data centres is probably the most efficient thing we can do if we accept the principle of needing that compute in the first place.” 

The numbers back this up. Data centres have seen their Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratios drop from 2.0 to 1.3 or 1.4, while computational efficiency per watt has increased 500-fold. In London, facilities can use free cooling for much of the year. New installations deploy the cleanest technology available – advanced emissions controls on standby generators and best-in-class equipment throughout. 

Macdonald offered a useful perspective on terminology: “What we’re trying to do is move away from fossil fuels. So zero carbon is probably a better term” than vague labels like “renewable” or “green.” He noted that even Sweden’s energy minister acknowledged they’d moved away from some renewable sources because nuclear and hydro offered more reliability. 

3. The talent crunch 

Here’s a challenge that doesn’t make headlines but keeps developers awake at night: finding people who can actually build these things. The specialised nature of data centre construction means choices are limited, especially in competitive markets. 

Wright was candid about the commercial pressure: “As a developer, we feel that our choices are very limited. When you go somewhere like Paris, where you have all the complications of doing things the French way, you might have two or three contractors you could choose from. In the hot markets, there’s a real constraint, and that unfortunately puts pressure on price and adds to how quickly you can mobilise.” 

Dalrymple highlighted another dimension: “Transferable skills is an issue because you’re competing with other sectors. Mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, specialists – they can work for three or four different centres, some of which will pay more, some of which are further forward.” 

The industry is responding by partnering with community colleges and training programmes, reaching across demographics to build the workforce it needs. This isn’t charity – it’s survival. The sector desperately needs to expand its talent pool. 

4. Can the UK compete? 

The elephant in the room: the UK has some of the world’s highest energy costs. Doesn’t that doom the sector? 

Wright offered a pragmatic take:

For the sort of hyperscale customers we cater to, they need capacity in the areas where we are. The cost of energy import is just part of that.” In other words, if you need low-latency access to London’s financial district or Dublin’s tech hub, you don’t have much choice. Energy costs are just one factor in a complex equation that includes land availability, regulatory environment, and strategic positioning. 

Bradley provided encouraging context on grid reform. While there’s a massive backlog of connection applications, the government’s Clean Power 2030 initiative is driving reforms that should free up capacity. Interestingly, maximum peak demand has actually been falling on most UK networks over the last six years, even as data centre demand grows. Factor in electrification of heat and transport, and you’ve got a complex puzzle that regulators are racing to solve. 

“We’re all hoping that by mid-next year, we’ll start building some stuff rather than just talking about it,” Bradley said, capturing the industry’s impatience with reform processes that, however necessary, have stalled shovel-ready projects. 

5. Looking ahead 

What emerged from this panel discussion was a picture of an industry at a fascinating inflection point. The demand is there – undeniably, massively there. The challenges are equally massive: grid capacity, planning frameworks, community integration, skills shortages, and technological change happening faster than infrastructure can adapt. 

But there’s also creativity, collaboration, and determination. From micro reactors to heat recovery, from flexible grid connections to edge computing in skyscrapers, the industry is thinking beyond traditional solutions. 

Dalrymple and his fellow panellists brought different perspectives – grid connections, operations, energy systems, development management – but their message was unified: this sector is essential infrastructure for modern society. As Wright put it, when discussing mixed-use developments: “You take the data centre out of that component, and that development, including all the community and social aspects, goes away.” 

Ridge’s multidisciplinary approach – coordinating across technical, planning, community, and construction challenges – is exactly what’s needed as projects scale from 3 megawatts to 700. The data centre of the 2020s isn’t just a building with servers; it’s a complex choreography of energy systems, planning negotiations, community engagement, and cutting-edge technology. 

The path forward requires everyone pulling in the same direction: developers, network operators, government, local authorities, and communities. Get the regulatory frameworks right, embrace innovative technologies, commit to sustainability and community benefit, and the UK can remain competitive despite its challenges. 

As our conversation wrapped up and someone mentioned the twelve-year timeline for major grid connections, the frustration was palpable. But so was the resolve. This industry has grown up fast over the last two decades. The next decade promises to be even more transformative – if we can match the pace of technology with the infrastructure to support it.