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Dublin slips to 15% as growth heads north

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DC Byte puts Dublin at 15 per cent of data-centre capacity across five western European hubs against London's 39 per cent, with Microsoft reported to be looking to the Nordics instead.

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Key takeaway

Dublin holds 15 per cent of west European capacity against London's 39, with growth moving to the Nordics.

Market-intelligence firm DC Byte puts Dublin at 15 per cent of data-centre capacity across five major western European hubs, against London's 39 per cent and 18 per cent each for Frankfurt and Paris, in figures reported by the Irish Times on 28 July⁠¹. The same report has Microsoft looking to the Nordics for new capacity. Those are one vendor's market-share estimates rather than a regulator's count, and the Nordic pivot is an inference drawn from them rather than a company statement.

The consumption side rests on firmer ground. Data centres took 24 per cent of Irish electricity in 2025, up from 5 per cent in 2015, and are projected past 30 per cent by 2030⁠². Close to a quarter of everything the Irish grid delivers already goes to buildings full of servers, in a country of 5.4 million people.

CRU requires new large users to match 80 per cent of consumption with renewables and to bring autoproducer generation, meaning plant the data centre builds and runs for itself rather than drawing from the public system. Pure DC's Dublin microgrid was the template for complying and staying. Others did the arithmetic and left.

Ireland ran this experiment before anyone else, which makes it the closest thing to a controlled result the sector has. Kajaani in Finland already ranked among the best greenfield data-centre locations globally when we covered it, so the destination was never a mystery. What Dublin demonstrates is the size of the response: terms that operators can meet but would rather not still move roughly a fifth of a market.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Meta run cloud computing out of data centres scattered across Europe. Dublin used to be one of the biggest hubs, but a market-research firm called DC Byte says its share of that European capacity has fallen to 15%, well behind London's 39%, because Ireland's power grid cannot easily supply more. Microsoft is reportedly now looking to the Nordics, where electricity and cooling are cheaper and more available, for its next wave of data centres instead.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Ireland risks losing future hyperscaler investment to less grid-constrained markets even as its existing data-centre footprint remains in place.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Ireland's CRU introduced an 80% renewable-matching and autoproducer-generation connection policy in 2026 aimed at making Dublin's data-centre boom sustainable rather than halting it, similar in intent to the Netherlands' NH2020 provincial rule that permits exceptions via public-interest carve-outs rather than blanket bans. Both jurisdictions chose conditional access over prohibition.

Counter-parallel: DC Byte's finding suggests that path has a limit London has not yet hit: Dublin's power-availability constraints and public sentiment are pushing hyperscalers to redirect future capacity elsewhere, unlike London and Frankfurt, which DC Byte lists holding larger shares of the same five-hub market despite their own grid pressures.

Dublin's 24% electricity-consumption share for data centres, against 5% in 2015, means the sector's local grid draw has grown roughly fivefold in a decade while transmission capacity has not kept pace, which is the structural reason DC Byte cites for hyperscalers redirecting future investment rather than expanding further in Ireland.

The practical effect is that Amazon, Microsoft and Meta retain their existing Dublin cloud regions, which are costly to relocate, while directing new capacity growth to less-constrained grids such as the Nordics, splitting where a hyperscaler's installed base sits from where its next investment lands.

Sources:The Irish Times

Mentions:Microsoft →Finland →Paris →Kajaani →Pure DC →Ireland →Netherlands →London →Dublin →Meta →Amazon →DC Byte →

First Reported In

Update #12 · Ofgem prices the grid queue by the megawatt

The Irish Times· 4 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Dublin slips to 15% as growth heads north

Ireland set terms rather than a ban, and a share of the growth went to jurisdictions where power is cheaper and the queue shorter.

Led to

Auditors could not count Nebius's assets

Dublin's shrinking west European capacity share is part of the backdrop against which Nebius financed and expanded its Nordic and Baltic capacity.

Occurred 11 Aug 2026

Read story →

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