Published: May 20, 2026 at 9:38 pm
AI workloads are rising faster than legacy infrastructure and national grids were designed to absorb, leading to a ‘data centre reckoning’ in Europe.
In EMEA specifically, the squeeze is sharper because capacity is constrained not only by technology, but also by planning rules, land use and grid bottlenecks.
Cities such as Amsterdam are openly restricting data centre expansion due to space and electricity network scarcity, while London-facing grid constraints are now a mainstream policy issue. Companies such as London-based Nscale are raising extraordinary amounts of funding to build facilities dedicated to serving the energy needs of AI.
David Holmes, global industries CTO at Dell Technologies, is at the forefront of the change. “The vertical markets that we cover in my overall organisation are healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, retail and energy – but my focus is very much around energy,” he tells me at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas.
“Our remit is understanding how we can apply technology to solve the problems of the energy industry, working with our partners. What we’ve seen over the last two years is AI becoming part of the conversation.
“How do we sustainably build the energy ecosystem that’s going to support the massive scaling of AI over the coming years? How do we enable this incredible driver of economic growth to deploy whilst ensuring that the energy ecosystem is reliable, resilient, affordable and sustainable?”