Britain could be at the forefront of a huge data center boom, which will bring huge energy demand as well.
Bloomberg NEF’s (BNEF) 2026 Data Centre Outlook paints a picture of large-scale EMEA growth in the upcoming decade, with data center power capacity expected to grow two and a half times.
More than half of this growth (forecasted through a base case) is contained in the UK, Germany, Spain, Finland and France. The UK will remain as Europe’s biggest data center market through to 2035 in BNEF’s outlook, with peak power demand reaching triple the installed capacity in 2025.
However, the UK’s data center pipeline is more concentrated into first-time developers than other EMEA markets – out of the planned IT capacity, 53% is “early stage”, which means they don’t have development permits yet and are run by developers who have no experience building a data center. BNEF say projects by first-time developers are “likely to be at greater risk of delays or cancellations”.
The report also shines a damning light on the ‘aggressive’ 2030 data centre growth target set by The EU’s Cloud and AI Development Act, saying that based on the current pipeline, their target is likely to be missed by 11.3GW.
Giant data centers may actually take a smaller chunk of the market, with their numbers expected to shrinka s first time developers jump into the pipeline at a faster rate.
The outlook therefore raises a question over how much of the UK’s planned data centre capacity will make it from the pipeline to reality, particularly as a large share is yet to secure development permits.
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