This Week's Top 5 Stories in the Data Centre Industry

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Mark Zuckerberg's data centre announcement was one of many stories discussed on Data Centre Magazine this week
From investments to innovation, Data Centre Magazine spotlights some of the leading stories that hit the newsstands this week
Backstone's 2024 decarbonisation summit. Credit: Blackstone

Blackstone's US$1bn Potomac Energy Center buy signals power surge for AI, highlighting critical data centre infrastructure needs in Virginia's tech hub.

Never has the demand for reliable power been more critical.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global electricity demand is anticipated to increase significantly.

Previously growing at 2.5% in 2023, it is now expected to advance by around 4% annually until 2026.

A key driver of this surge is the expanding relationship between data centres and energy infrastructures.The recent US$1bn acquisition of the Potomac Energy Center in Virginia, USA by Blackstone underscores the evolving dynamics of this relationship.

The 774MW natural gas-fired power facility is strategically positioned in Loudoun County, the epicentre of the world's most substantial aggregation of data centres — known as Data Center Alley.

This plant, therefore, is not just a power station, but a pivotal piece in the critical digital infrastructure supporting vast amounts of global data traffic.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company plans to expand its data centre footprint (Image: Meta)

2025 is the year of Meta AI according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

In such an era of AI-enabled digital transformation, Mark Zuckerberg announced via Facebook that the company is planning to build a 2GW data centre with more than 1.3 million Nvidia AI GPUs.

As part of this, he states that Meta will also be investing US$65bn in AI in 2025, hoping to solidify its position as a global technology leader and expand upon its offerings. 

“This will be a defining year for AI,” he states via his Facebook post. “In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than one billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model and we'll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts. 

“To power this, Meta is building a 2GW+ data centre that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.”

Moody’s suggests that green bonds focused on climate change mitigation are expected to dominate the market

Data centres are consuming approximately 1% of global electricity demand, which has prompted increasing calls for regulation and more environmentally-friendly measures to be enforced. 

It is against this backdrop that has caused operators to move further towards green financing options for their facilities, as they seek to fund expansion without impacting sustainability targets.

As a result of this shift, the global sustainable bond market is expected to reach US$1tn in 2025. According to Moody’s Ratings, data centre operators and technology companies are continuing to seek capital for energy-efficient facilities.

Rachel Reeves says the UK needs to go "further and faster" with innovation (Image: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 / Deed)

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves announces plans to tackle “slow planning system” in the UK, ensuring data centres are built faster to support AI-led innovation.

Data centres are a gateway to greater innovation and the UK is poised to act, according to UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.

Speaking in Oxfordshire on 29th January 2025, the Chancellor unveiled plans to grow the UK economy to cement the country’s position as a catalyst of change and ultimately drive economic growth for businesses and everyday working people.

Part of these plans include confronting the planning system in the UK, which includes speeding up the delivery of new data centres to build more infrastructure and support AI-led developments.

“Data centres are driving the AI revolution,” Rachel Reeves said, emphasising that there is an urgent need for the UK to “speed up infrastructure delivery.”

“The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is a priority for this government and it will be introduced in the Spring.”

Nokia has stepped up its data centre market presence over the past year (Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 / Deed)

Leading telco Nokia has reported stronger than expected fourth-quarter adjusted operating profit and sales. 

Over the past year, the company has experienced a sharp increase in demand for telecoms infrastructure from mobile operators in North America and India. It has reported that its quarterly net sales rose 10% to €5.98 billion (US$6.2bn), which beat estimations from analysts. 

The company has attributed part of this dramatic growth to its work in the data centre industry, where the company continued to expand its presence in the market in Q4. 

“Looking further ahead into 2025, we expect the improved trends we have seen in Network Infrastructure in the second half of this year, to sustain and drive strong growth,” shares Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO of Nokia.

“Cloud and Network Services is also expected to grow with strong 5G Core momentum and growth in our Enterprise Campus Edge business. End markets in Mobile Networks are improving and we currently assume largely stable net sales. Nokia Technologies is expected to deliver approximately €1.1 billion (US$1.14bn) of operating profit.”


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