In Today’s Issue: What Europe's connection rules reward, how much of the queue will be built, and what developers face in energy costs.

Dear Readers,

Europe wants an AI industry that can compete with the United States and China. The European Union (EU) is preparing public support for giant AI data centres to provide computing capacity for that industry. Where those facilities are built, and which companies operate them, will shape Europe's ability to develop and run its own AI. (EuroHPC JU, 07/30/2026)

In some of the places developers want to build, the electricity network is already too crowded to connect every applicant. Expanding it takes years. Until then, the rules for allocating connections give some projects priority and leave others waiting. A decision about access to the grid becomes a decision about which businesses get to expand. (European Commission, 12/10/2025; TenneT/Liander, 12/18/2024)

Are Europe's rules for electricity connections deciding where AI data centres are built, and which companies get to build them? If so, energy policy is also acting as industrial policy: it is helping select the locations and businesses behind Europe's AI ambitions.

The country examples reveal what those rules reward, from securing land and financing to arranging new electricity supply. Judging their effect also means examining how much of the demand in connection queues will become real. And a connection alone is no guarantee of a viable business: renewed hostilities around Iran are adding to the uncertainty over what that electricity will cost. (German transmission operators, 02/05/2026; CRU, 12/12/2025; IEA, 09/11/2026)

All the best,

Kim Isenberg

A data centre can start operating in two to three years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which analyses global energy markets. If its electricity connection takes much longer, the developer must postpone opening, choose another site or finance a separate power supply. The delay means years without revenue from that facility, while competitors with power available sooner can start signing customers. (IEA, 04/10/2025)

The obstacle is often local. The network must carry the new demand alongside power already promised to other users. More generation elsewhere in the country does little for a site whose cables and substations are already at their limit.

In December 2024, grid operators TenneT and Liander warned of long waits across much of the Dutch province of Noord-Holland: gradual relief from 2031, with the wider network expansion complete no earlier than 2036. A project dependent on those upgrades would miss an opening before 2030, however quickly its building could be finished. (TenneT/Liander, 12/18/2024)

For new data centres with 50 megawatts (MW) of capacity, the commercial real estate firm JLL estimates a connection wait of roughly seven years in Frankfurt, Paris and Northern Virginia. Its estimate for Dallas and Phoenix is about two to three years. The European hubs face a substantial timing disadvantage against those faster US locations. Northern Virginia's equally long wait shows why developers need to compare individual sites: even a leading AI market can leave a new facility waiting for power. (JLL, 01/2026, page 18)

Allocating the capacity available before those upgrades means choosing between projects. Giving a hospital priority leaves less room for a factory or a data centre; rewarding an applicant's readiness to build produces a different order. (European Commission, 12/10/2025)