Europe’s data centre fast growth rate has been exposed as the Old Continent is now looking a potential raise floor space addition of 850,000 m2, around 9.2 million sqf.

The flooring space, to be completed by 2023, represents an addition of 1.5Gw of power to the already European gigawatt data centre landscape, research company Datacentrepricing has forecasted in its latest Data Centre Developments in Europe report.

In terms financial investment, the new data centre developments in 12 European countries amounts to €9 billion, or US$10.92 billion.

Other highlights from the report include:

i) Although the UK is forecast to see marginally the highest increase in data centre space – in terms of percentage growth it is ranked only ninth out of the 12 countries surveyed;

ii) Countries containing the so-called FLAP cities (the acronym for Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris) are set to see relatively low levels of growth – with Germany ranked seventh out of the twelve markets surveyed, the UK in ninth, France in tenth and the Netherlands in eleventh place out of 12 in terms of percentage growth;

iii) Countries of the so-called Tier 2 markets, which have less established data centre markets, are set to see the highest rates of percentage growth – led by Ireland and Italy – followed by Austria, Spain, Switzerland and Poland;

iv) The growth in some markets could be transformative – in Ireland new campus facilities planned from CyrusOne, K2 Data Centres and Echelon Data Centres will more than double potential capacity. In Italy, new developments by Aruba, Equinix and Vantage Data Centers will boost Italian space by over 60%;

v) The key to new developments is the introduction of large new campus developments suitable for hyperscale applications by a range of large investors including – Ark Data Centres, Vantage Data Centers, Aruba, Interxion/Digital Realty, CyrusOne, NTT Global Ltd and Equinix.

“Data Centre construction in Europe is currently booming – with the first phase of build outs to appear during 2022,” it reads in the report. “Compared with 2019 to 2020 the number of new Data Centre projects from 2021 to 2022 have increased by 50%.

“The growth in new facilities in Europe reflects the spread of data centres to smaller metro markets in Europe who are now catching up with the larger FLAP markets with large campus developments. 

“The relative lull in data centre investment in 2019 to 2020 – a result of the Covid-19 pandemic – has resulted in an increase in new projects scheduled to start from 2021 and 2022.”