Frankfurt's ceiling: What Europe's most constrained markets reveal about the future of data infrastructure

European IT power capacity surged from 10,539MW in 2023 to 14,784MW by end-2025, exceeding all previous forecasts. Cumulatively, €176 billion of investment is expected across European data centres from 2026 to 2031, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 25% in scale colocation through to 2031.     Globally, the trend is similar. With the global demand for electricity skyrocketing for the data centre sector from 91TWh to a projected 465TWh, the need for clean electricity for this infrastructure has never been as important as it is today.  This article is the first in a series focusing on Europe's FLAP-D data centre markets, beginning today with Frankfurt.