According to DCD, German power producer RWE has completed the sale of its planned Didcot Data Campus to an undisclosed hyperscaler for approximately €225 million ($262m). The site is located at the former Didcot A coal-fired power station in Oxfordshire, UK, which originally opened in 1970 and was demolished between 2014 and 2020. RWE had planned to develop a data center at the location, which already obtained planning permission in July 2025 from the Vale of White Horse District Council. The sale contributed to higher-than-expected profits for the company, with its nine-month adjusted EBITDA falling by 13 percent to €3.48 billion. This represents RWE’s only data center project in the UK.
Energy Meets Compute
Here’s the thing that makes this deal particularly interesting. We’re seeing energy producers and data center operators getting increasingly cozy, and RWE’s move is a perfect example. They’re not just selling power anymore – they’re selling entire development sites to the very companies that are becoming their biggest customers. RWE’s finance chief Michael Mueller basically said it straight: the AI boom is driving electricity demand, which means more business for renewable energy providers like them.
And they’re putting their money where their mouth is. RWE has signed multiple major power purchase agreements with tech giants, including a 446MW deal with Microsoft and a 200MW solar PPA with Meta in Texas. When you’re dealing with power requirements at that scale, having reliable industrial computing infrastructure becomes absolutely critical. Companies need robust systems that can handle the massive data processing and control requirements of these energy-intensive operations.
The Bigger Picture
So what does this tell us about the energy sector’s strategy? RWE isn’t just dabbling – they’re making serious bets on the data center industry as a growth driver. With a renewable portfolio of about 10GW across the US and a pipeline of more than 24GW in development, they’re positioning themselves as the go-to power provider for energy-hungry hyperscalers.
But here’s a question worth asking: why sell the development site rather than build and operate the data center themselves? Probably because their expertise is in energy generation, not data center operations. By selling to an established hyperscaler, they lock in a major customer while avoiding the operational complexity of running the facility. It’s a smart play that leverages their core strengths while capturing value from the AI-driven compute boom.
The transformation from coal plant to data campus is also pretty symbolic. We’re watching the energy infrastructure of the past literally make way for the computing infrastructure of the future. And given the power demands of modern AI workloads, that future looks increasingly bright for companies like RWE that can deliver clean, reliable energy at scale.
