Power constraints drive European data center growth to new regions

Sentisight.ai reports that European data center growth is increasingly shaped by power constraints rather than connectivity.

• Main finding: European data center development is shifting from established markets to the Nordics, Spain and Portugal due to limited grid capacity, cooler climates, and access to renewable energy; the region has ~3,400 facilities across 45 countries and is prioritizing sites suited for AI and high-performance workloads.
• Additional details:District heating programs are expanding with operators reusing waste heat (example: atNorth’s agreement with Kesko Corporation), surplus heat from the Espoo data centerreduces the store’s heating emissions by more than 200 tons of CO2 annually; power demand rose to 96 TWh in 2024 and is projected to reach 168 TWh by 2030.