Agora Deloitte Data Centre Flexibility in Europe (2026)

A study prepared by Deloitte Finance in collaboration with Agora Energiewende (work done January to March 2026) on what flexible operation of data centres is worth to the European power system and what regulation is needed. It is a European-level study with 11 modelled countries; Sweden is mentioned only as an example of non-firm connection agreements.

Problem statement

• Data-centre electricity demand in Europe is expected to rise two to fourfold by 2035, outpacing grid development. Data centres are concentrated in the FLAP-D hubs (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin); Dublin set a moratorium in 2021, Frankfurt restrictions in 2023 and Amsterdam a moratorium in 2025. Connection lead times reach around 10 years for large projects in constrained areas such as Ireland and the Netherlands.
• Grid access was the top concern of data-centre operators (68 %) in the past two editions of the annual EU data-centres review. The IEA models a capacity growth factor of 1.7 between 2024 and 2030 against 2.3 implied by the project pipeline, partly due to grid delays.
• Policy context cited: the Commission’s aim to triple EU data-centre capacity in five to seven years and five AI gigafactories with a EUR 20 billion plan; the December 2025 European Grid Package, which proposes that a connection request to the grid gets a tacit grant, an offer of a flexible connection agreement if capacity is insufficient, or a reasoned refusal with an alternative connection point (amending Art. 17 of Directive 2018/2001); the Commission’s guidance on efficient and timely grid connections, which reports flexible connection agreements in at least 15 member states and confirms that first-come-first-served is not mandatory; and the demand response network code, expected to enter into force in 2026 (the report’s wording).

Two scenarios (2035)

• Mandated Flexibility: data centres get a flexible connection agreement in exchange for minimum flexibility used for a few stress episodes. They would be flexible in only 1.5 % of hours (about 120 hours per country) and affect 0.6 % of their demand (about 1 TWh). Their contribution to residual load peaks is on average 45 % lower than in an inflexible reference case, 4 GW of thermal capacity becomes redundant and annual savings are about EUR 500 million.
• Open-EU Flexibility: operators continuously optimise, with about 20 % of annual load shifted; replaces 20 TWh of thermal generation, saves 5 Mt CO₂ a year and up to EUR 1.7 billion a year in welfare gains.

Recommendations

1. Include data centres in European and national network and system planning; publish grid hosting capacity for all new connections; use differentiated connection charges to steer siting.
2. Harmonised flexible connection agreement templates, built jointly by regulators, system operators and data-centre operators, with a definition of “grid-friendly uses” that can justify prioritisation and with minimum flexibility requirements matched to data-centre capability; let users meet requirements by buying local flexibility on the same substation.
3. More flexibility driven by greenhouse-gas accounting, market signals and network tariffs; on-site renewables, batteries or local PPAs.
4. Wider no-regret flexibility: finer price zones, dynamic tariffs and network charges, aggregation of small loads.

Relevance

The best European evidence that data centres can be a grid asset through connection terms, and the source of the “1.5 % of hours” framing. See Data Centres and Grid Flexibility and Flexible Connection Agreements. Swedish transmission queue data are in Source - Svk Ansökningskö Statistik (2026-09); the Swedish transmission-level conditional agreement is in Source - Svk Villkorade Anslutningsavtal Förstudie (2025).

Limits of this summary

The executive summary, state of play (sections 1) and recommendations (section 4) were read in full; the modelling chapters (sections 2 and 3) were read for the headline figures, which were checked in the text, not line by line. The country-level results were not read.