Belgium has become an attractive alternative location for data centre operators that struggle with Europe’s congested Tier 1 data centre markets
According to a new report by the Belgian Digital Infrastructure Association (BDIA), The Belgian data centre market is on track for a 50% IT capacity increase by 2025, driven by innovation, international investments, increase of shift to private and public cloud, and the unstoppable rise of cloud and AI technologies.
Challenges in Tier 1 European data centre hubs have prompted international providers and tenants to explore new regions, including Brussels. This has positioned Belgium as an emerging player in the international colocation market. Moreover, Belgium is home to one of Google’s largest hyperscale data centre campuses, with a second campus on the way.
The impact of regulations such as the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) is also shaping market strategies, as data centres will have to prioritise energy efficiency and sustainability measures even more to comply with the directive’s requirements. According to the BDIA, these factors collectively underscore Belgium’s expanding role as an emerging Tier 2 data centre hub, catering both to local enterprises and an increasingly international client base
Google isn’t alone with Microsoft continuing to build on expanding the Belgian region that was launched in 2023 and is fitting out its data centre white space in three separate colocation facilities of different data centre operators in the bigger Brussels Capital Region. The construction phase of these data centre facilities that will service Microsoft has been finalised but fit-out works are still ongoing. Brussels’ largest data centre project that currently is under construction and maturing concerns the Kevlinx BRU01 campus. This first development phase consists of a 16MW data centre and a front of the house including office and logistics.
In terms of IT power, colocation data centres in Belgium have crossed the major milestone of 100MW. The three largest data centre operators in Belgium with capacity live are Digital Realty, LCL, and Datacentre United [Proximus included in Datacentre United capacity]. Based on IT power, these parties currently are responsible for 72% of all available IT Power. Penta Infra currently covers 1.5MW live capacity out of 7MW IT load in total. The landscape will continue to evolve rapidly over the coming years. Kevlinx and EdgeConneX will have significant data centre capacity live in the coming months as well, according to the report.
Wallonia versus Flanders
Data centre allocation in Belgium is concentrated directly in the City of Brussels and around the Brussels capital region, with a significant cluster located near Zaventem, close to Brussels Airport. The Brussels capital region itself continues to decrease in its share of Belgian data centre ‘white space’, down to 19% from 26% just two years ago. In contrast, the broader metropolitan area of Brussels now accounts for 62% of the nation’s data centre floor space, a further increase compared to last year.
Interestingly , there is a big imbalance between the Wallonia and Flanders regions. When excluding data centres in the Flemish part of the Brussels metropolitan area, Wallonia houses a mere 4% of the nation’s data centre IT power, while Flanders, if we exclude Flemish Brabant – since it holds most data centres of the Brussels Metro Region, holds 20%. This figure will even rise to 77% if BDIA includes Flemish Brabant.
BDIA admits is was too optimistic for 2024 when it forecast growth to 125MW – it will finish at about 103MW. The key reason is the delays in the Ready-For-Service (RFS) dates for some facilities. On some occasions, construction started later than planned or is taking more time to complete.
“As a result, the biggest contributor to the growth of 10%, or 10 MW, was not the data centres for the new Microsoft cloud region, but the Nexus data centre that opened in the first quarter and was acquired by Penta Infra,” said BDIA. “We expect to see more RFSs for data centres from Kevlinx, EdgeConneX, Datacentre United, and LCL in 2025. Assuming that most of these RFS dates will be in 2025, we expect the market to grow by more than 50% to 162 MW across the coming year. Looking beyond 2025, we have identified concrete plans for 80 MW and see interest from potential new entrants into the Belgian market.”
As a result, BDIA estimates that by 2029, the Belgian market will hit 261 MW – a compound annual growth rate of 20.5%.
Power problem
Like much of the world, BDIA said negative perceptions of data centres in the public were not widespread and so “questions from federal to local policymakers regarding energy consumption, sustainability, and the broader societal value of hosting data centres are expected to become more frequent.” Quite. The association outlines various EU steps that may mitigate thing like the introduction of the data centre publication obligation for the EED.
With this, data centres with installed IT power of 500 kW or more are required to report on their footprint in terms of (renewable) energy usage and efficiency, water usage, heat reuse, and circularity. For now, it means that data centres will have to start reporting on actual performance as opposed to design statistics that only look at the optimal situation.
Even so, the tech giants are carrying on relentlessly. BDIA reflects this stating “In terms of energy consumption, Google’s data centres in Saint-Ghislain have a notable impact, utilising an amount of energy comparable to the entire contracted power capacity of all Belgian colocation data centres and matching their collective floor space.” As a result, hyperscalers will impact the renewal of each nation’s energy grid, irrespective of actions by other data centre rivals.