London remains the leading data centre market in the EMEA, with operational IT load of 996MW, followed by Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dublin, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
The consultancy’s 2024 Global Data Center Market Comparison showed the biggest markets across the EMEA region continued to expand, despite headwinds from power availability and pricing, and sustainability regulations.
On the global arena, the UK capital is the tenth largest market by size, after Virginia, Beijing, Oregon, Phoenix, Shanghai, Dallas, Columbus, Atlanta, and Tokyo.
Data centre development pipeline in London is also growing despite constraints on available power, land and political sentiment. The city has about 100MW of IT load under construction with plans filed for a further 500MW.
Among 63 global markets, there was a record development pipeline tracked in 2023, totalling 7.1GW. So far this year, this number has grown further to 12GW.
Cushman noted that some of the projects have experienced pauses in development amid shortage of components. This disruption is expected to continue over the next couple of years as supply chains are constructed and vendors adjust manufacturing to align with demand.
Turning to development land prices, European markets continue to have relatively high costs when compared with the rest of the world. In addition, land pricing in the region has steadily risen over the past couple of years amid challenges with water, power and sewage management.
Jacob Albers, head of alternatives insights, said: “Access to liquidity and transaction volumes have slowed for a host of CRE sectors as interest rates rise. While data centres have not been completely immune to this, there’s been consistent momentum for further expansion of institutional capital in the space.
“With the availability of power and the availability of land in certain markets, the sector has risen to the forefront and is seeing hundreds of megawatts in the development pipeline.”
Image © İsmail Enes Ayhan/Unsplash
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