英国在数据中心建设方面正面临严重的产能瓶颈与基础设施拖累。东伦敦金丝雀码头附近的Telehouse South数据中心为金融交易提供了低于1毫秒的超低延迟（相比之下连接纽约服务器需耗时70倍以上）。然而，英国的人均数据中心容量仅为美国的整三分之一。英国计划到2030年将数据中心容量从当前的2吉瓦（GW）提升至6吉瓦以上，但同期的美国数据中心容量预计将从29吉瓦飙升至90吉瓦以上，两国差距正在进一步扩大。
英国数据中心面临的主要挑战在于高昂的运行成本与极其缓慢的审批程序。英国的工业电价几乎是美国的四倍，极大地加重了运营负担。在建造与供电方面，微软高管指出现行体制下建设一座数据中心仅需18个月，但获取电网接入许可却需要长达8年（电网接入平均等待时间比美国长10个月）。卡内基国际和平基金会的研究显示，由于电网连接拖延，一座100兆瓦（MW）数据中心在英国的生命周期价值比在美国低19%。
电网接入队列的严重拥堵加剧了危机。数据中心开发商的投机性申请导致电网排队容量在2024年11月至2025年6月间从41吉瓦狂飙至125吉瓦，而英国的电力峰值需求仅为45吉瓦。尽管政府已启动清退虚假申请并设立AI优先接入的“增长区”，但改革进展缓慢。此外，公众认知亦存在反差：盖洛普民调显示71%的美国人反对在当地建数据中心，而Public First调查显示约七成英国人对数据中心知之甚少，这为政府加快基础设施建设与保留高价值算力税收提供了窗口期。
Britain faces critical infrastructure bottlenecks in data-centre expansion, threatening its position in the global artificial-intelligence competition. Facilities like Telehouse South in London provide sub-millisecond network latency essential for financial trading, compared to 70-fold higher latencies for New York servers. However, Britain currently possesses just one-third of America's per-capita data-centre capacity. By 2030, Britain aims to expand capacity from 2GW to 6GW, whereas American capacity is projected to surge from 29GW to over 90GW, drastically widening the infrastructure gap.
High costs and power grid delays severely hamper British competitiveness. Industrial electricity prices in Britain are nearly four times higher than in America. Furthermore, Microsoft executives note that while constructing a facility takes 18 months, securing a power grid connection requires up to eight years—an average delay ten months longer than in America. According to the Carnegie Endowment, the lifetime financial value of a 100MW data centre is 19% lower in Britain than in America primarily due to these grid interconnection delays.
Speculative queueing has overwhelmed the national power grid, with connection requests tripling from 41GW to 125GW between November 2024 and June 2025, vastly exceeding Britain's peak electricity demand of 45GW. Although the government has introduced AI growth zones and started filtering invalid requests, implementation remains sluggish. Public sentiment presents an opportunity: while 71% of Americans oppose local data centres in Gallup polls over energy concerns, 70% of Britons remain unfamiliar with them, allowing space for decisive policy reform.
Source: Britain is struggling to build data centres
Subtitle: It risks missing a big opportunity
Dateline: 7月 30, 2026 05:36 上午 | East India Docks, Londo