Demand for data centre space in Europe outstripped supply last year, despite delivery of a number of large data centres across the region, according to new research from CBRE.
In 2023, there was 601MW of take-up across the 14 largest markets in Europe but only 561MW of new supply delivered.
Strong levels of demand in the leading markets of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin, led to the imbalance across Europe last year, with take-up soaring to 252MW in Q4 2023 – a 41% increase on the previous quarter.
Kevin Restivo, head of European data centre research at CBRE, said: “Hyperscalers have sought increasingly larger facilities that are tailored to their needs for some time. As such, the average size of new wholesale facilities in Europe has grown dramatically over the past two years and will only accelerate. However, there are fewer deals being struck by data centre providers with their largest customers.”
Andrew Jay, head of data centre solutions at CBRE, added: “Demand in Europe will only accelerate given that artificial intelligence [AI] workloads are expected to generate higher demand for capacity, as organisations look to enhance their operations by leveraging machine learning algorithms. For the meantime, the challenge remains the lack of available power and AI-appropriate facilities across Europe.”
