By Lucy Raitano
LONDON (Reuters) -Data centre capacity growth across Europe, the Middle East and Africa has slowed down in 2025 so far compared to the same period last year, despite surging demand, as a lack of available power delays project timelines, a report from Savills found.
Global data centre demand and planned projects have surged since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, as investors and governments bet generative artificial intelligence will revolutionise the way everyone works and lives. This has led to increased demand for electricity capacity to power the centres.
Since January, 850 megawatts (MW) of power has come online in the form of new data centre capacity, 11% below the same period of 2024, the report by global real estate services provider Savills showed.
Power capacity, measured in megawatts, is the key metric used for sizing data centres. It refers to the total possible power a data centre can deliver to servers, cooling systems, and other infrastructure.
Savills said overall live data centre capacity is still up 12% at 11,400 MW from 10,140 MW 12 months ago. The report said the year-to-date decline in new power delivered is largely a result of persistent constraints on energy supply that have delayed projects and not a reflection of a drop in demand for data centres.
Demand for the centres is still surging, Savills said, leading to an imbalance with restricted power supply.
Take-up – the actual amount of capacity newly occupied – fell to 845 megawatts, just half of power capacity leased in 2024. Take-up figures also include pre-lets – leases already contracted for future data centres.
But total contracted power capacity – comprising both live and future capacity contracted – grew 12% year-on-year to 14,500 MW, showing strong underlying demand.
As of the third quarter of 2025, 91% of all data centre capacity had been leased, up from 87% in the same quarter of 2022, also reflecting strong demand.
(Reporting by Lucy Raitano; Editing by Amanda Cooper and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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