1st October 2026
For decades, businesses that needed electricity followed a fairly simple model. Build the factory, office or computer centre, connect it to the electricity grid and pay the bill.
That model is beginning to change.
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and data centres is creating companies that need extraordinary amounts of electricity. Some are now looking at the power supply almost as carefully as they look at land, buildings and telecommunications.
The result could eventually change where major industrial investment takes place.
The International Energy Agency says technology companies accounted for around 40% of corporate renewable-power purchase agreements signed worldwide in 2025. The pipeline of agreements between data-centre operators and small modular nuclear reactor projects has also grown sharply, from about 25GW at the end of 2024 to 45GW. Developers in America are even investigating on-site gas generation because waiting for a grid connection can take too long.
This is not necessarily a case of Amazon, Microsoft or Google suddenly becoming electricity companies.
More often they are signing long-term contracts to secure power from particular generating projects, investing in generation or arranging dedicated connections. But the effect is similar. Electricity supply is becoming part of the investment decision.
Europe is seeing the same trend. Analysis published in September 2026 found that electricity contracted by European data-centre operators has almost tripled since 2022, with more than 4,300MW contracted since then across several forms of generation, including solar, wind and nuclear.
There is a very good reason for this.
A modern data centre cannot simply be told to wait five years for a grid connection.
Britain is already seeing the problem. The proposed huge AI supercomputer at Loughton in Essex has reportedly been delayed because the local electricity network cannot provide the required 90MW on the original timetable. The project is now exploring alternative ways of securing power.
The British Government has recognised the problem.
Its AI Growth Zones programme says grid connections are the single biggest obstacle to establishing the zones. The Government is considering allowing developers to build their own high-voltage infrastructure and is proposing financial incentives for qualifying data centres locating where they can make use of available electricity generation.
And Scotland is particularly interesting.
The Government says a 500MW data centre located in Scotland could potentially receive an electricity-cost reduction of up to £24 per megawatt-hour under the proposed scheme, subject to consultation and legislation. The reasoning is that Scotland sometimes has more renewable electricity available than the transmission network can move elsewhere. Putting major electricity users closer to that generation could reduce the need to pay generators to reduce output and could make better use of the existing system.
The National Energy System Operator has made much the same point.
Its chief executive said in May that locating large electricity users close to Scotland's renewable generation could reduce the costs associated with moving electricity around Britain and help reduce the need to constrain renewable generation.
This turns the traditional economic-development argument on its head.
For years, Scotland has been told that it needs better infrastructure to attract major employers.
But increasingly the infrastructure that matters may be electricity.
The UK Government's own figures suggest electricity demand from British data centres could rise from around 7.6TWh a year currently to somewhere between 20TWh and 41TWh by 2035. Individual corporate power agreements can already involve more than 100MW or 200MW.
That is industrial-scale electricity consumption.
And it creates an intriguing possibility for Scotland's north.
The Government's technical study of potential locations for new nuclear development identified Dounreay in Caithness, alongside Torness and Hunterston, as an area with high technical potential for future nuclear development.
That does not mean a nuclear power station is going to be built at Dounreay. Nor does it mean Caithness is about to become Britain's next data-centre capital.
But the pieces of a much bigger economic question are beginning to appear.
Caithness has the history of nuclear energy. It has major renewable-energy potential. It has a long industrial association with electricity and nuclear technology. It also has the challenge of distance from the main centres of population and business.
Could that apparent disadvantage become an advantage if future electricity-hungry industries increasingly want to locate where power is available?
There is another important development. Britain's advanced nuclear framework is now designed partly to encourage private investment in new nuclear projects. The Government is examining different commercial models, including arrangements where new nuclear generation could supply particular industrial customers directly.
This could lead to a different approach to industrial development.
Instead of saying: "We have an industrial site. Can we get enough electricity to it?"
the question could become: "We have electricity. What industries can we put beside it?"
That is a potentially important change.
It also means that Scotland needs to think carefully about where it wants large new electricity demand to go. There is little economic sense in generating enormous quantities of renewable electricity in the north of Scotland, struggling to transmit it south, and then building major new electricity users elsewhere because they cannot get sufficient power.
Of course, electricity alone will not transform Caithness. Businesses also need skilled workers, transport, telecommunications, housing, education and reliable public services.
But power could become one of the great competitive assets of the next generation.
The companies driving the AI revolution are discovering something traditional industry has known for centuries.
If you need enormous amounts of energy, knowing where the power is may be just as important as knowing where the customers are.
For Scotland, and perhaps particularly for Caithness, that could be an opportunity worth thinking about now rather than after the next wave of investment has already chosen somewhere else.