Ireland Expected To Attract €8bn In Data Centre Investments By 2021
As new data centre planning permission laws are discussed, CAPEX could increase in the years ahead.
Ireland is the new hot spot for data centre investments in Europe with researchers expecting the country to ramp up €8bn in aggregate data centre constructions between 2009 and 2021.
“There has been an uptick in investment in data centres in Ireland in recent years,” according to Host in Ireland’s “Ireland’s Data Hosting Industry 2017” report.
According to the document, every year since 2012 and up to 2021 is set to beat the previous, with 2017 construction investments – which does not include servers, storage and racks – amounting to nearly $4.2bn up from just over $3.5bn in 2016.
For 2018, CAPEX is expected to nearly reach $6bn with 2019 posed to top $6.2bn.
By 2020, the country is expected to have drawn in more than $7.1bn and in 2021, the $8bn mark is projected to be reached.
David McAuley, Founder & CEO, Bitpower, Host in Ireland Advisory Council, said: “Investment in data centres is significant, and the data industry supports many jobs across the economy. There are also opportunities in the content of the data. We are only at the beginning of the digital age, and Ireland needs to be ready to leverage future trends in data.
“Collaboration between the data centre operators, the state utilities, renewable developers, researchers, state agencies, and local authorities will be key to unlocking future opportunities.”
Host in Ireland explained that to calculate the cost of each facility, it applied a metric of €m per MW of data centre capacity to their model.
It continued: “We varied the value depending on the type and age of the data centre.
“We compared the results to the investment numbers provided by survey respondents and to other reports of investment.
“The aggregated results indicate that by 2016, €3 Billion had been invested in data centres. There are €1.1bn facilities under construction in 2017.
“A further €1.6bn have secured planning permission, and there are approximately €2bn indicated in various masterplans. We, therefore, expect to see investments averaging €1 Billion per annum for the next 3-4 years.”
