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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 July ¹. 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 2030 ². 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 (ID:1241). 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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Different Perspectives

Government of Odisha

Odisha signed a $1.5bn agreement with HCLTech and Sarvam AI on 24 July for a sovereign AI data centre in Bhubaneswar, targeting 2028 operations. While regulators elsewhere price developers out of the queue, Odisha is bidding state financial assistance to bring capacity in, betting the AI infrastructure boom is worth courting rather than rationing.

Switch Datacenters and Uithoorn

The developer, the municipality, Liander and dozens of greenhouse growers signed a waste-heat agreement letting a 60 MVA facility proceed under a provincial rule that bans sites above 5 MVA. The public-interest exception argues the site relieves rather than adds to grid congestion, working around a standing ban from inside rather than waiting for it to change.

Iskandar Puteri residents

Residents protested in February over falling water pressure they attribute to ZDATA's 300 MW construction; ZDATA disputes causation and has not yet resolved the dispute with its wastewater-only pivot. The complaint sits unadjudicated while the operator advertises compliance to state authorities the residents cannot address directly.

Microsoft

DC Byte reports Microsoft looking to the Nordics for new capacity while Dublin's regional share falls to 15 per cent, though this is a market-intelligence inference rather than a company statement. Microsoft keeps its existing Dublin cloud region, which is costly to relocate, while directing new investment where power is cheaper and the queue is shorter.

ISO New England

ISO-NE proposed excluding new large loads from its Installed Capacity Requirement entirely, forcing data centres to bring their own generation or accept curtailment, even though New England's demand has been flat or falling for a decade. The reform is pre-emptive, written before the region has felt the strain PJM and MISO already report.

Ofgem

Ofgem opened its Data Centre Commitment Fee consultation on 29 July, arguing that free options on grid capacity let developers bank places on ten sites and abandon nine, crowding out projects that would build. It expects the deposit to filter the queue before the rule even takes final form.