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Methodology

The geographic scope of this report covers the following countries: the EU27, the UK, Norway and Switzerland. Together, they are referred to as “Europe” in the report.

Data centres – data availability and sources

There is a recognised lack of official statistics on data centres in Europe, both at regional and national level. This report uses data from a recent ICIS publication, unless otherwise specified, as it provides consistent and granular data for Europe in 2024 and annual forecasts until 2035, with the latter matching projections from the IEA and IMF.

It is important to note that uncertainty remains around the pace of data centre growth in the coming years. This will be influenced by algorithmic developments, computation efficiency trends in software and hardware and broader economic factors affecting the investment and supply chain.

Other data – sources

The grid congestion indicator is based on a methodology from the IEA: using transmission grid congestion costs and volumes. For EU countries, data from ACER was used, specifically the volume of remedial actions activated in Member States. For the UK, the NESO Balancing Costs Annual Report 2024 was used. The congestion proxy is the volume of remedial actions divided by the 2023 electricity demand (%).

Employment data for the Netherlands – to calculate the share of total employment related to the data centre sector – is based on annual employment figures from Eurostat for the age class 20 to 64 years. Online data code: lfsi_emp_a. Data extracted on 11th June 2025. 

Wait times for grid connection were based on the following sources: IEA report on Energy and AI and a recent article from AVK-SEG, a company specialising in innovative power solutions, particularly for data centres. These were supplemented by more location-specific reports for the Netherlands, Germany, Frankfurt, Norway and Poland.

Contribution of data centres to the Norwegian economy

A report from the Norwegian Data Centre Industry states that data centres deliver NOK 1.8 million in value creation effect per annual GWh. This figure was converted to an estimated total economic contribution in euros based on the following:

• The Norwegian Data Centre Industry report estimates that the data centre industry used around 1% of Norway’s power production in 2023. Given the uncertainties that surround data centre consumption, maintaining consistency in sources was preferred.
• Ember data puts Norway’s power production in 2023 as 154 TWh. Based on these figures, consumption of data centres was calculated to be 1540 GWh – putting the economic contribution of data centres as a total of NOK 2772 million. 

This was converted to euros for consistency with other figures in the report (€ 240 million).

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Ember: Ali Candlin, Beatrice Petrovich, Sarah Brown, Lauren Orso, Claire Kaelin and Izabela Urbańska.

EirGrid Group: Conal Campbell, Senior Policy Lead

Google: Vilma Kaza, Brian Denvir, Natalia Baudry

Photo credit

David Robinson / Alamy Stock Photo