CX Tech files plans for 1GW data center campus at Scotland's Chapelcross nuclear site

CX Tech has filed a Planning Permission in Principle application with Dumfries & Galloway Council for a roughly 1GW data center and technology campus at Chapelcross, near Annan in the south of Scotland, a project the company values at £16.5 billion ($21.77 billion). The submission covers eight buildings totaling 162,000 square meters (1.74 million sq ft), an on-site substation and 55 hectares, while the company's project website sets construction between 2027 and 2035—an eight-year build-out contingent on permission being secured this year. No anchor tenant is attached to the filing.

The ground has carried heavy infrastructure before: RAF Annan during the Second World War, then the Chapelcross nuclear power station, launched in 1959, decommissioned in 2004 and rated at 240MW. Removal and remediation of the old buildings is continuing, and the campus is proposed on land north of where the plant stood, its promised load roughly four times the reactor's capacity.

The relationship with the landowner predates this week's filing. NDA Properties Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, appointed CX Tech strategic development partner for the site, and the NDA group disclosed in 2024 that it was working with CX Power—the name CX Tech carried before its rebrand—on a green energy hub at Chapelcross with the potential for AI data centers. This week's filing formalizes a relationship the landowner had already made public.

The application is now with Dumfries & Galloway Council, which has not granted permission, and CX Tech's own schedule runs construction from 2027 to 2035 only if consent is secured this year. A filing of this kind commits no capital, only a consenting calendar that the local authority controls.

Consent has become a pre-construction currency in this asset class, with permit conditions rather than lease terms doing much of the pricing of data center risk. Chapelcross is a fair place to test that claim: the landowner is a public body with a remediation mandate of its own, the site already carries an industrial use, and the local authority holds the first decisive vote. CX Tech held community meetings on the proposals in June, before lodging the application.

Graeme Anderson, CX Tech's chief executive, founded project management firm GA Consultants in 2022 and launched CX Tech late last year. He framed the project around demand for AI and high-performance computing, saying the challenge lies in bringing together scale, power, sustainability, resilience and long-term growth.

Power is where the project makes its boldest claims, beginning with an adjacent 132kV Grid Supply Point and what CX Tech describes as substantial existing and potential renewable energy around the site. The company says it is exploring direct and private-wire connections to wind, solar and biomass generation and claims the campus will run exclusively on renewable power. No contracted supply behind that claim is disclosed.

The direct-wire element matters more, because grid capacity, interconnection queues and load-class rules now determine what gets built more than capital does, which makes power rights an asset class in their own right. A campus that arrives with its own 132kV connection point and a stated appetite for private wires is arguing that it has stepped around the queue rather than waited in it.

The plant design also leans into the resource questions consenting authorities now weigh: closed-loop, non-evaporative air cooling to hold down water consumption, green fuel rather than conventional diesel for backup generation, and waste heat reuse the company says it is exploring.

No anchor tenant appears in the announcement, and no offtake terms are disclosed, leaving the £16.5 billion as a developer's estimate of build cost rather than a figure the market has underwritten. Against roughly 1GW of planned capacity, that works out to about £16.5 million per megawatt.

That absence puts the project on the merchant side of digital infrastructure's two-tier market. Assets anchored by a named hyperscaler or AI lab attract utility-like pricing, while sites arriving with land, power and permits but no lease are a different proposition for lenders, and the distinction tends to surface in the cost of capital before it surfaces in occupancy.

CX Tech expects a determination this year. A power connection and a named tenant would be the evidence that moves the project from a plan measured in pounds per megawatt to an asset measured in contracted load.