The UK's Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) on Tuesday signed off on a £3.4 billion project to build an "electric highway" between Scotland and Yorkshire.
The world's longest 'interconnector' to deliver green electricity to 1.4 million UK homes.
Dubbed Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2), the majority of the 500 kilometer long cable will travel along the North Sea floor with the remaining 70 kilometers buried underground. When completed in 2029, Ofgem says the cable, the first of 26 proposed grid projects, will help channel clean energy from UK offshore wind farms to customers.
The upgrades come amid growing concerns about ballooning data center energy needs driven in no small part by widespread use of AI accelerators.
In total, the UK energy watchdog says the transmission line will carry two gigawatts of high-voltage direct current, which will be converted back to AC by converter stations at either end. That's enough power for about two million homes or, alternatively, a hell of a lot of GPUs — something the nation will need if it hopes to realize its goal of becoming an AI superpower.
