Data centres in Germany planning own fossil fuel plants, citing slow grid connections – report

Data centre operators in Germany are planning to build new fossil fuel power capacity to supply their operations, citing the slow pace of connecting to the electricity grid as a justification, reported energy and climate newsletter Tagesspiegel Background. Connecting to the grid in Germany takes 10 to 15 years, according to Cologne-based energy supplier Rheinenergie, and up to seven years according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“We are seeing more and more data centres building their own power plants in the immediate vicinity of the data centre,” said Thomas Frank from Siemens Energy, referring to the global picture. He said his company is currently in talks with data centre operators in Germany who are planning to build their own gas power plants.

The Tagesspiegel Background article gave the example of a new data centre built in Frankfurt am Main by US operator Cyrus One  in cooperation with German utility company E.ON. The data centre is set to open in 2026, and Cyrus One plans to supplement a grid connection with a 61 megawatt (MW) gas plant in 2029. The gas plant, which can switch to up to 25 percent hydrogen in the future, will allow the data centre to function “without being solely dependent on the expansion of regional grid infrastructure, which is currently somewhat delayed”, a spokesperson for Cyrus One told Tagesspiegel Background.

The number of planning applications for data centres across Germany has shot up in recent years. The local grid operator in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, has received 170 enquiries from data centres with a total capacity of 22 GW since 2022, which for data centres denotes the peak demand for electricity they can draw from the grid. However, only two data centres with a capacity of 100 MW have been connected so far, and Google has cancelled a long-planned data centre in Mittenwalde, Brandenburg, citing problems with a grid connection.

Global electricity demand is set to skyrocket, with demand for energy-intensive AI being one important driver. The IEA has predicted that global demand from data centres is set to more than double in the next five years, consuming more energy than all of Japan by the end of the decade. The rapid buildout of data centres is expected to push up demand for gas, with the IEA predicting that gas production will rise by 175 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2035 for data centres alone. However, it also found that renewable energy will make the largest contribution to increased electricity demand, adding 450 TWh by 2035.

The European Commission has laid out a new Energy Efficiency Roadmap for data infrastructure in a bid to curb energy use. It found that the bloc’s energy consumption would be 27 percent higher today versus 20 years ago without improvements in energy efficiency during that time.