Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that large electricity users such as data centres contribute to system investment and operation through flexibility and demand management when connecting to the electricity network.

The Government, NESO and Ofgem have worked together with industry to identify specific actions to support an increase in large non-domestic consumer-led flexibility, setting those actions out in the Clean Flexibility Roadmap, published in 2025.

Data centres, like other non-domestic users, can play a role in being flexible with their usage, generating system benefits that will help all energy users. Government is currently consulting on whether some categories of large demand users should be required to provide a minimum level of demand flexibility as a condition of connection.