By Paul Homewood
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The latest quarterly Data Centre Update is out:
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https://cushwake.cld.bz/emeadatacentresupdate-02-2025-emea-regional-en-content-datacentres
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The report highlights the explosive growth in AI centres, for instance in London:
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Across Europe as a whole, about 11 GW is either under construction or planned.
With a large hub planned in Cardiff/Newport, Britain could add an extra 2 GW in the next five years, adding demand to a grid which is already stretched to the limit.
Cushman & Wakefield write a lot of nonsense about how “clean energy” will come to the rescue, for instance:
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They miss the point however. Having a PPA is purely a financial arrangement, where the Data Centre agrees to buy the output of, say, a solar farm. But the electricity it actually uses still comes from the grid.
Data Centres, needless to say, work 24/7. Regardless of that PPA, the grid still only has so much capacity, and increasingly that won’t be enough to supply the burgeoning AI industry as well as the rest of the country.
Nobody foresaw the phenomenal growth in digital technology, and I suspect the same will be true of AI.
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