Can ageing coal and gas plants solve Europe's data centre crisis?

 When the cooling towers of Europe’s coal and gas plants were decommissioned, many assumed their role in the continent’s energy story was over. Instead, they are reportedly being recast as the infrastructure for Europe’s digital future. From Germany’s RWE to Italy’s Enel and France’s Engie, Europe’s utilities are seizing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom to transform retired fossil sites into next-generation data centres.   For technology companies racing to feed the insatiable appetite of AI models, these sites offer the one commodity money alone can’t buy: immediate and reliable access to power and water. While new grid connections, especially in FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin) markets, can sometimes take more than a decade to secure, repurposed power stations deliver both infrastructure and grid access in one stroke.