Slough businesses use more than six times the UK’s average electricity

Slough has the highest business energy consumption in the UK, research has found – using more than six times the amount of electricity compared to the national average.

According to the latest figures from Utility Bidder, a business energy comparison service, Slough borough is the UK’s highest consumer of business electricity.

The average amount of energy used by a business in Slough in 2024 was more than 407,840 kWh – electricity for about 150 homes – while the national average is 63,500.

This is more than twice the energy consumption in the next most energy-thirsty area, Hillingdon (179,737 kWh).

It also represents a large spike in energy usage by businesses in Slough over four years.

In 2020, the average business in Slough was using 268,905 kWh (equivalent to what is needed for about 100 homes) per year.

The increase represents a rise of about 52 per cent in four years.

By way of comparison, while Slough's business energy consumption has gone up by 138,935 kWh per year since 2020, Hillingdon's has gone up by half as much (by 60,780 kWh).

Slough is also the local authority area where energy consumption is rising at the fastest rate in the UK.

The average energy consumption per business has faced a percentage increase of roughly 10 per cent a year.

If that growth were to continue, total consumption would double in roughly seven years.

What the data does not cover is where the energy consumption is coming from – although it is known that certain types of businesses are quite energy-hungry.

For example, logistics and industrial expansions can add very large power loads quickly, while a single large data centre can consume as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes.

Data-centre development in Slough expanded significantly during the early 2020s, and the trend continues; Slough is now one of Europe’s largest data centre hubs, with more than 30 operational data centres.

If all these were running at their maximum at the same time, they could collectively draw up to about 1,000 megawatts of electricity from the grid (one gigawatt).

A gigawatt is a very large amount. It can power around 500,000 to one million homes at once.

Out of that gigawatt total, more than half – about 675 megawatts – comes from ‘hyperscale’ data centres – very large ones operated by major companies that run large-scale internet, cloud storage and AI systems.

These are warehouse-sized buildings running rows of computers 24 hours a day, using vast amounts of electricity and cooling.

Professional analyses suggest that the 30 data centres in Slough support more than 14,000 jobs and generate more than £30million annually in business rates.

But high electricity demand raises questions about local decarbonisation targets; the more electricity an area consumes, the harder it is to reduce total emissions quickly. Slough council was contacted for comment on this.