Data centre market scanning report

As the world continues to digitalise, the demand for data centres has surged – driven by increased internet usage, the expansion of streaming services, growing cloud computing needs, and, most notably, the widespread adoption of AI. The ensuing acceleration of data centre deployment is increasing competition for suitable locations, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of data centre dynamics across both well-established and emerging markets.

However, meeting this demand presents significant challenges. The industry is struggling to keep pace due to constraints such as power connectivity issues, water scarcity, limited land availability, and complex regulatory requirements. These factors pose major hurdles to the continues development of data centres worldwide.

In this report, we analyse 49 markets across six key data centre criteria using our proprietary ranking methodology and investment attractiveness framework. These criteria include: data centre demand, development constraints, power attractiveness, policy environment, macroeconomic risk, and the greenness of the market. Collectively, these scores provide granular insight on the strengths and weaknesses of key markets from an investment attractiveness perspective.

Our findings indicate that the United States remains the leading market for data centre investment, with other well-established hubs such as Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Japan ranking highly. Among emerging markets, Malaysia, India, and Chile stand out as promising destinations for investment.

We also deep dive into three markets in particular, the US, Spain and Ireland, with the following high-level findings:

• The US: as the world's largest and fastest-growing data centre market, supported by strong fundamentals such as abundant land, renewable energy, robust fibre connectivity, and a mature investment environment.
• Spain: key opportunity market, currently experiencing high growth as Spain has the opportunity to become a critical market for the data centre industry due to competitive RE 24/7 sourcing, access to land, cost competitiveness, fibre connectivity and favourable macro-economic conditions.
• Ireland: despite being a mature market, Ireland’s ranking has been negatively impacted by its constrained grid and lack of power generation adequacy, which has adversely impacted the near-term pipeline of data centres in the market.

Download our report and get in touch with Mark Turner or Gregory Borel to find out more.