Welcome to our second Energy Update of 2026, where West London Business shares some of the key takeaways from policy announcements and dialogue with key stakeholders over the past few months. Our focus, addressing constraints to securing new energy supply for large development projects in three of our boroughs: Hounslow, Hillingdon and Ealing. We also highlight new technologies being pioneered by AWS.
Our focus, in dialogue with key stakeholders such as National Grid, SSEN, Ofgem and NESO, is to encourage the identification of pathways to upgrade the network prior to the current 2037 target.
Having trouble understanding all the different acronyms?
USE OUR GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS >>>
City Hall publishes Buro Happold data centre study as part of London Plan evidence base
The Mayor of London has published a report commissioned from Buro Happold as part of the evidence base for a new London Plan. It highlights surge in demand for energy to power new data centres in London, with future data centres demand for connections up to 10 times the current levels.
Data centre growth in London is critical to ensure the capital remains the leading global hub for digital innovation and AI. This ambition underpinned in new London Infrastructure Framework, which is pivotal to unlocking housing, driving job creation and upgrading London’s transport network. The Mayor has committed to leading whole-city coordination on data centre growth shaped around climate, resilience and responsible AI and his ambition for London to be global leader in Sustainable Data Centre Innovation.
He has pledged to deliver coordinated action on data centres, while unveiling the new report which reveals the major impact on London’s energy network, with demand driving unprecedented pressure on electricity networks. The report confirms London remains the UK’s leading data centre hub, with 99 sites delivering around 760MW at peak demand – the equivalent to the electricity use of 750,000 homes.
But demand for power is accelerating at an unprecedented scale. There is around 10 times the capacity currently used by existing data centres in London already requested in the grid connection queue.
Draft London Plan – MBUL4 Utilities – capacity, connectivity and resilience >>
Draft London Plan – GLE3 Data centres policy >>
In-Person NESO Strategic Energy Planning Forum for Greater London
West London Business Alliance were delighted to participate in the National Energy Systems Operator’s (NESO’s) first in-person Strategic Energy Planning Forum for Greater London, on Monday 8 June.
Through roundtable discussions and workshops, we were able to share our concerns and challenges towards West London’s future growth and development directly with the NESO team, joined by colleagues from OPDC and several West London ‘Major Energy Users’. The NESO team highlighted the significant number of subregional Local Area Energy Plans to have come out of Greater London, indicating the ‘pride of place’ for the capital the necessity of investment.
WLB’s Chief Executive Andrew Dakers participated in the afternoon panel on Planning for London’s growth: The role of strategic energy planning, with the most prominent topics ranging from data transparency to aid local authorities and how to make progress on Clean Power 2030 targets with such uncertainty across both the transmission and distribution level.
Read London TV coverage of the Forum >>
Amazon pioneers data centre resilience breakthrough
Amazon has pioneered a new technology that could reduce the number of routers and switches used in its large Amazon Web Services (AWS) hyperscale data centres, which will both reduce power consumption and be more efficient.
They are achieving this through resilient network graphs or RNG, which use randomised cable connections to make a network more efficient. Through quasi-randomised routing, demand on the system is spread out across the network rather than channelled through a few routes in the conventional network structure format that would end up overheating and having large amounts of traffic. These traditional structures, known as ‘fat tree’ networks, whilst being very reliable can end up being both economically and environmentally costly through overheating due to large amounts of traffic travelling through the same nodes and requiring a greater number of wires to connect every part of the system.
As this is rolled out across AWS data centres it could reduce some of the existing stress on the West London energy grid.
Learn more about the theory >>>
Download the publication research >>>
Other significant reports and announcements
- Sector specific methodology consultation: electricity distribution price control (ED3) – Ofgem consultation (now closed)
- Risks and opportunities to the sustainability of data centres in the UK – Environmental Audit Committee Inquiry
- Beyond 2030 – Electricity Transmission Update Report, NESO, June 2026 (Very light on London content which we have queried) … An interesting associated Interactive Map
To get involved with our Transport & Infrastructure Policy Working Group which shapes our action on West London energy constraints or to learn more about contributing to WLB’s work in this area, please contact Amy Jiang or Andrew Dakers.
