Data centres

Worldwide, the data centres market has grown significantly in recent years. This is partly due to cloud computing, big data, the (further) increasing digitalisation and the increasing demand for data services such as AI. Together with Frankfurt, London, Paris and Dublin, Amsterdam is one of the five most important colocation markets^[14] in the European data centre market. A position owed to a strategic location and a good digital infrastructure. But while demand for data services and capacity in our country continues to increase, growth in the Netherlands is limited. This results in scarcity.

Trends and developments

• The amount of data is growing exponentially due to developments such as AI and digitization. As a result, the demand for data centre is also increasing. In five years' time, this has led to a significant decrease in vacancy in and around Amsterdam: from 24% to almost 9%. This is particularly low in the data centre sector. Moreover, due to power grid congestion and restrictive regulations, there is hardly any room for expansion. The vacancy rate is therefore only expected to decrease further.
  
  
• With a capacity of more than 500 megawatts, Amsterdam is currently the third largest colocation data centre hub in Europe. But while other prime markets, like here, are also increasingly struggling with congestion, their capacity continues to grow for now. As such, we expect Amsterdam to be overtaken by Paris by 2025, and therefore fall outside the top three.
  
  
• The tight supply and increasing demand for data centre capacity is leading to a search for new development locations outside Amsterdam. Factors such as power grid capacity, network connectivity, residual heat implementation, flood risks and permits are crucial in this regard. The scarcity of suitable locations is forcing operators to expand their search criteria and look for expansion opportunities in the regions of Rotterdam, The Hague, Almere, Lelystad and Groningen.
  
  
• The search for suitable locations will intensify in 2025 – with a focus on capacity in both the short and long term. TenneT invests in infrastructure improvements. This will provide a new wave of available power capacity by 2030, and offer opportunities for data centres at existing and new locations.

Scarcity of development locations slows down growth of Amsterdam data centre market

The inadequate power grid and the limited number of new development locations for data centres mean that the growth of the Amsterdam data centre market is unable to keep up with demand. While the four other prime data centre markets and emerging secondary markets within Europe still offer opportunities to meet the explosive demand, this is decreasingly the case in Amsterdam. Since 2021, it can therefore also be seen that capacity growth has slowed down compared to the average of the top five data centre markets.