Why Data Centers Are Leaving Europe's Biggest Hubs

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0:00The AI boom has a problem. Europe's biggest data center hubs are running out of power.

0:05Data centers used to mainly be built where the population and the industry are in Europe,

0:11and that means in the center of the heart of Europe, the so-called FLAP-D, Frankfurt,

0:16London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. They go to where electricity is available.

0:23And in many places like the UK, the grid capacity is really full.

0:27This is pushing data centers to the edges of Europe.

0:30Now data centers are migrating to the edges, on the one hand, to the Iberian Peninsula,

0:35there's lots of renewable, cheap energy there, and then the very other extreme of Europe,

0:41the Nordics, also cool air, lots of renewables, wind, hydro and great quality grid as well.

0:47The AI boom is making this even more urgent. McKinsey estimates data centers will need

0:52$6.7 trillion in investment by 2030 to keep pace with compute demand.

0:58There's an absolute appetite for secondary and even tertiary markets. Access to the

1:02electrical equipment has come up as the number two biggest concern for large data center operators.

1:08But there's another issue, control.

1:10A lot of the data center construction is basically foreign direct investment. So,

1:16it's large multinational companies investing in the Nordics and as they do that their

1:22political weight also increases.

1:25Even if it's physically located here, a lot of the times in terms of ownership and investment,

1:32and in terms of technology, it's still very much reliant on the U.S. in particular.

1:38Europe's data center shift isn't just about cheaper power. It's also about who owns,

1:43funds, and controls the infrastructure behind the AI boom.

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