Orcadian Energy PLC

Orcadian Energy is planning to build what it says is the world's first offshore, gas-powered data centre in the North Sea. The London-listed company would extract gas from the Earlham field and a nearby field called Orwell via a single platform, pipe it to an adjacent power station, and use the electricity to run a 200-megawatt data centre on a third platform, with captured CO2 pumped back beneath the seabed. Orcadian said the project, located 65 miles off Great Yarmouth, could be the first phase of a network providing up to a gigawatt of power and would sell capacity to firms such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft without adding pressure to the UK grid. The company holds a licence for the Earlham field, where gas already contains a high proportion of CO2, making conventional use expensive.