Computing power for AI to quadruple in Germany
dpa
Nov 10, 2025
Source:
Handelsblatt
Berlin. According to a study, Germany and Europe will continue to lag far behind in the expansion of data centres, especially for artificial intelligence (AI), in the coming years.
The digital association Bitkom predicts that the capacity of all installed data centres in Germany will increase by 60 percent to more than 5,000 megawatts by 2030. However, this is only a small fraction of the capacity that countries such as the USA and China have already built up today.
According to Bitkom, data centre capacities in the USA, for example, are set to more than double to 95,000 megawatts by 2030. China is also planning a significantly faster expansion. In Europe, capacities are expected to increase by a total of around 70 per cent to 28,000 megawatts over the same period.
According to Bitkom, the computing power used for AI will quadruple in Germany by 2030, from the current 530 megawatts to 2020 megawatts of connected load. This would correspond to around 40 percent of the total power in data centres.
As a result, energy demand is also growing. This year alone, it totalled 21.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), almost doubling over the past ten years. "Around two thirds of the electricity demand is accounted for by the IT infrastructure of the data centres, i.e. servers, storage and network technology," it said.
The remaining third is accounted for by cooling or the uninterruptible power supply. In view of the increasing demand, particularly due to AI and computer applications in the network (cloud computing), energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important.
Hesse has high computing power
With more than 1,100 megawatts of installed capacity, the largest data centre capacities in the greater Frankfurt area are located in Hesse, particularly in the greater Frankfurt area. The installed capacity there is set to more than double over the next few years. The region scores particularly well with its connection to Europe's largest network node and an existing data centre ecosystem.
