The period between April and June 2023 saw an extra 114 MW of data centre demand across Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin (FLAP-D), according to JLL’s EMEA Data Centres Q2 2023 report.
This is more than double the 51 MW seen in the findings for quarter one, as well as being the largest second quarter in the report’s record.
The report found that there was heightened activity for pre-lettings, with 141 MW committed in quarter two compared to 64 MW in quarter one. A total of 73 MW of new space also came online in the second quarter.
Frankfurt saw 44 MW of take-up in quarter two, for a total of 80 MW to-date in comparison to 26 MW at the same point last year. The city also had 69 MW of new supply added in the first half of the 2023.
Paris has had 24 MW of new supply added in 2023, with a further 40 MW due later in the year, while Dublin saw an additional 12 MW added, increasing the overall market size by 6% to 199 MW.
Despite being the largest market with a total of 902 MW, London saw a drop in the amount of new supply added so far this year at 7 MW. However, a number of new developments are in the pipeline.
The report identifies the growing demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) as being one of the driving factors behind increased data processing speed, with the high compute power required leading to a fundamental change in the design of data centres.
With latency less of an issue, data centres used for training AI models can be located where access to renewable energy, land and water is readily available – leading to a ‘bring the data centre to the power rather than bring power to the data centre’ approach emerging, says the report.
“The goldrush of AI continues to drive data centre growth even further and is opening an exciting new chapter for our industry,” said Tom Glover, Head of EMEA Data Centre Transactions at JLL. “The second quarter of 2023 was another record-breaking period for data centre demand across Europe, with the activity showing no signs of abating.”
Daniel Thorpe, EMEA Data Centre Research Lead at JLL, added, “The AI era is here and there is no going back. What we’re seeing play out in the market is that data centres are gearing up to better support increased power and performance requirements. The second half of 2023 will see continued momentum as new data centre supply comes to the market.”
