Commercial real estate and investment management company JLL reported record demand for European data centers in the second quarter of 2023.
The period from April to June 2023 saw 114MW of take-up across Europe’s leading markets of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin (FLAP-D), more than double the 51MW recorded in Q1 - and the most ever on record for a second quarter.
There was also heightened activity for pre-lettings, with 141MW committed in Q2, compared to 64MW in Q1, JLL said in its report. Supply continues to outstrip demand, however, with a total of 73MW of new space coming online in Q2.
“The goldrush of AI continues to drive data center growth even further and is opening an exciting new chapter for our industry," Tom Glover, head of EMEA data center transactions at JLL, said. "The second quarter of 2023 was another record-breaking period for data center demand across Europe, with the activity showing no signs of abating.”
Daniel Thorpe, EMEA data center 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 centers are gearing up to better support increased power and performance requirements. The second half of 2023 will see continued momentum as new data center supply comes to the market.”
Within FLAP-D, Frankfurt took up 44MW - up from 26MW the same time last year. The region has seen 69MW of new supply added in the first half of the year, with the total colocation market in Frankfurt now 656MW.
While London remains the largest market at 902MW overall, it has only seen 7MW of new supply added this year. However, JLL notes that the development pipeline is still strong.
Paris added 24MW this year so far, while another 40MW is on the way for the rest of 2023. Take-up for Q2 hit 23MW, making it Paris' busiest quarter since tracking began in 2016. The region has a current market size of 374MW.
Dublin added 12MW this year, for an overall market size of 199MW. This is despite a de-facto moratorium on new data centers due to EirGrid's inability to supply power - because these are all facilities that received approval before the restrictions came in.
Amsterdam added 10MW for a total of 458MW, with the market still sluggish after the data center moratorium ended in 2020.
Outside of FLAP-D, Madrid added 7MW of new supply, increasing the market size to a total of 97MW. Berlin added no new supplies, remaining at 92MW.
