Soben Data Centre Trends 2025

30th January 2025

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Power, AI, and Progress

DCT 25 - Foreword

A wave of change caused by the surge in deployment of regenerative AI is upon us, with a race to build massive new facilities for training AI in the face of labour shortages, limited skilled contractor resource and, in some locations, power constraints. Now we are bracing ourselves for an even bigger wave, and what that will bring, as algorithms are trained and deployed, and more businesses embrace AI.

Adaptability and flexibility are the watchwords for 2025. The speed of technological development is already outpacing that of construction, which means that we will continue to see changes to scope – and some plans could be ripped up altogether.

There are still a lot of question marks over exactly how the world is going to take hold of AI and use it day to day. And that will have a big impact on what we ask of our data centres and exactly where we need them to be located.

Foreword: Expect the unexpected​

The race is on to find new locations, new sources of power and sympathetic regulatory regimes for those regions and governments looking to fulfil their digital growth ambitions.

Read on for our top ten predictions for 2025, in Soben’s third annual trends report.

By Scott Smyth

Founder and Group CEO

Download the full report

Trend 1

AI:Pause for thought

> Big is getting bigger

> Impact of AI inference still unpredictable

> Robotics ups the ante

The burgeoning use of generative AI has seen a wave of planned data centre projects which is stronger than anyone predicted. Looking forward, demand for AI data centres could rise at a rate of 30% per year between 2023 and 2030, according to McKinsey [1]. This would mean that it accounted for 70% of all data centre capacity, or 154 GW out of 219 GW in a midrange scenario.

For now, these projects are largely focused on providing capacity for machine learning, training up the algorithms that will be used to deliver AI tools and applications. “These can be located virtually anywhere, where there are large plots of land with associated power, preferably renewable,” says Pieter Schaap, Group Development Director at Soben.

Scaling up: hyperscale and beyond

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The increased processing power required by AI data centres means campuses which were considered large 10 years ago would today be thought of as a minnow. A hyperscale data centre was initially 20MW or more; five years ago, that had risen to perhaps 60 MW. Today, we are seeing plans for 1 GW campuses, such as that planned by ECL, east of Houston, Texas – mooted to be powered by hydrogen [2]. “These AI facilities are huge, exponentially bigger than cloud computing campuses,” says Joe Cusick, Soben’s Group COO.

So, will big keep getting bigger? Not everywhere.

Expanding horizons: inference and emerging technologies​

"With the AI environment - and the infrastructure that supports it - changing so rapidly, agility and flexibility are vital for those of us delivering construction projects."

Perhaps three years from now, we can expect the next wave of AI-driven demand to hit. There will be an increased demand for data centre space close to urban and industrial centres, smaller scale inference facilities that need low latency so that data moves fast between the data centre and the machinery or equipment being operated; think autonomous vehicles such as Waymo taxis or Einride freight vehicles.

The use of AI in healthcare, finance, and defence – already advanced compared to other sectors – will ramp up. Applications range from medical diagnoses, drug development and AI-assisted robotic surgery in healthcare to loan appraisals, agent modelling which simulates individual behaviour, and fraud detection. The energy sector is catching up fast, with uses that include more precise demand forecasting and optimised storage and distribution of energy.

Almost every organisation could benefit from the deployment of AI, and many more will over the next five years. The EU wants to see 75% of firms using AI by 2030. And its deployment could offer huge efficiencies in the public sector, an ambition underlined by the UK government’s recently announced plans to turn the UK into an ‘AI Superpower’.

With generative AI set to become business as usual for private and public sector organisations, and embedded in almost every app we use via our phones, there will be a need for inference data centres with low latency connections to where the apps are located. These could be located close to existing cloud regions.

And then there is the vision of robots as part of the everyday.

The news that Nvidia has set its sights on robotics, promising to showcase technology for humanoid robots in the first half of 2025, accelerates the arrival of that vision. Tesla too is pushing that narrative – the realisation of its humanoid robot Tesla Optimus will follow on from the launch of its Cybercab by 2027 and later its 20-person capacity Robovan, says Elon Musk.

Also on the horizon is quantum computing which, while promising huge leaps in processing speed and capacity, will require significant changes to data centre infrastructure. Currently quantum computers require super-low temperatures to operate which would demand more energy for cooling.

The ambition for quantum computing to move from lab to data centre became a little more attainable in December last year [2024] when Google unveiled its new quantum chip, Willow, which it believes takes us closer to large-scale deployment.

Download the full report

Trend 2

More on-site power generation

> Power constraints are delaying projects

> Plans for novel on-site power generation

> US turns to natural gas plants

Power remains the constraining factor in many markets. In some locations, there is not enough power available to feed future developments, in others the lead time to power new data centres can be longer than the development cycle for a data centre; up to three years has been reported in North Virginia, for example.

“One of my clients had a big campus scheduled to kick off in the next year or so. They recently said that they were taking it off the radar for at least a year due to power constraints,” says Sophie Smith, Director, Americas, Soben.

Exploring solutions to power challenges

As well as delaying start dates, developers have been looking at temporary measures for powering data centres while they wait for the necessary electrical infrastructure to be built.

On one project, we were considering sourcing power skids that we can power off local 13,000-volt power and transform up to 25,000 volts that we could use as construction power and then to commission our builds while we waited for the substation to be built,” reports Mark Smith, Group Account Executive at Soben.

Power constraints are exacerbated by the increased power demand from AI data centres, which could ramp up to ten times that of a standard rack. Aside from seeking out new locations, which boast plentiful supplies of renewable power, data centre operators are looking at various options for generating power on site.

Microgrids offer an effective way to tap into local renewable energy sources and to provide energy security.

Localised power systems that operate independently of the main grid, microgrids are ideal for powering critical infrastructure in remote locations such as Scotland – set to be Europe’s newest data centre hotspot.

Low carbon power generation technologies, such as nuclear (see below) or hydrogen, are longer-term options. Digital Reef is planning a 600MW campus in Havering in East London which it says will include a hydrogen power cell to generate energy – although how it will source the green hydrogen needed to make this a clean source of energy is unclear.

In the shorter term, fossil fuels may be coming to the rescue. Some data centre operators are turning to natural gas as a source of on-site power generation using combined cycle gas plants (CCGT). Natural gas suppliers in the US are reporting an increased demand for natural pipelines to data centre sites [3].

This could be seen as a bridging solution while lower carbon solutions are under development [4]. Or it could reflect how operators expect the change in administration of the US Government to impact on incentives and funding for green energy and attitudes to fossil fuel.

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"Power is going to continue to be an issue. Elon Musk predicted we would run out in a year or two. It has already happened in some markets. It is going to be a huge challenge."

Download the full report

Trend 3

The pull of renewables

> Green energy demand for training AI

> European operators pushing to net zero emissions by 2030

> Trump could disrupt renewables progress in the US

Digital transformation and energy transition away from fossil fuels go hand in hand. Data centre providers are clustering in areas that can provide plentiful sources of renewable energy. And governments that are keen to grow their digital economies are investing in green power to attract the data centres they need to service their strategies.

The move to renewable energy has been underway for over a decade. Google, for example, says that it signed over 115 agreements between 2010 and 2023 adding up to over 14 GW of clean energy. And it has set itself a target to run all its data centres on ‘carbon-free energy’ by 2030 [5].

Renewable energy: the key to future growth

Huge data centres for training AI algorithms do need plentiful power but don’t need the low latency connectivity to urban centres or the same security of power supply. This means that new locations with plentiful supplies of renewable energy – think hydropower in Scandinavia or wind power in Scotland – are gaining popularity.

In the wake of the European Green Deal, a set of laws aimed to make Europe climate neutral by 2050, data centre operators there have signed up to the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact. Launched in 2021, this promises to make signatories’ data centres climate neutral by 2030, with over 100 companies signed up, around 75% of Europe’s data centre market [6].

In the Middle East, green energy is fuelling Qatar’s battle with Oman to become the region’s data centre hub, a position historically held by Bahrain. Qatar’s Vision 2030 to become a leading digital economy is underpinned by an energy strategy that aims to increase its proportion of renewable power generation from 5% today to 18%, mainly through investing in solar energy. Dubai, which boasts the world’s largest solar-powered data centre [7] aims to generate 100% of its power from green sources by 2050.

Meanwhile in the US, laws including the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, created to encourage decarbonisation through subsidies, have created a good environment for investment in renewable energy. Of course, these laws were enacted under the Biden administration; commentators suggest that the pace of renewables growth in the US could slow somewhat due to the change in administration.

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"Countries across the Middle East are competing to establish themselves as leaders in the regional data centre industry, driven by bold investments in renewable energy and digital infrastructure. With sustainability now a priority, the region’s commitment to green energy is creating new opportunities for developers."

Discover the rest...

Want to discover the other seven trends that are going to dominate the data centre conversation this year? Learn which are the hottest new locations for data centre development, what governments around the world are doing to welcome development and much much more.

Download the full report now.

Our Soben Authors

Authors

Group Key Account Director
[email protected]
Soben Mark Smith
Group Development Director
[email protected]
Soben Pieter Schaap
CEO – Americas
[email protected]
Soben Robert Kim
Director – Americas
[email protected]
Sophie Smith - Circle