cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6301143
Australian infrastructure and property developer Goodman Group has teamed up with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) to establish a EUR 8 billion (CAD 12.9bn, AUD 14.1bn) European data center partnership.
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The 50/50 venture … will comprise four projects totalling 435MW of primary power and 282MW of IT load, including two in Paris (PAR01 and PAR02), one in Frankfurt (FRA02), and one in Amsterdam (AMS01).
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According to the partners, all projects have secured power connections, planning permits, and have substantially progressed site infrastructure works, which they claim will enable construction commencement by 30 June 2026.
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“A portfolio of this size and quality – located in Europe’s FLAP markets [FLAP is acronym of “Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris”] – is rare. These powered locations are highly sought after to meet the rapidly growing requirement for cloud computing and AI adoption, particularly when they offer speed to market and delivery certainty. The quality and scale of this partnership make it ideal for our long-term relationship with CPP Investments. We’re pleased to be investing alongside them for their entry into the European data center market,” said Greg Goodman, CEO of Goodman Group.
The transaction will follow a phased approach with completion expected by March 2026, subject to closing conditions. The two companies have had a relationship since 2009, with investments across Australia, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.
CPP has made several significant investments in the digital infrastructure space. Most recently, in August, it announced an investment of C$225m (US$160m) to facilitate the expansion of a data center in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.
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[Edit typo.]
This is much better news than what we have heard from other EU members this year such as Spain. Madrid gave China’s Huawei a multimillion-dollar contract to store data from judicial wiretaps, which has raised concern among allies about Chinese access to sensitive data and weakened trust with allies. On the other hand, Spain is working more closely with U.S. companies, such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, to build secure data centers on its soil.
Maybe it’s just me but I’d rather have Australia and Canada as partners than China and the U.S.
I hope this is the kind of DC that will end up supporting sovereign infrastructure. Eliminating the USA from thr loop should be a good investment.
Hopefully those data centres will put local communities first, for power, water and services. We must not see what has happened in the US.
Oh boy, thats the retirement money disappearing into the AI bubble! Bye bye retirement money!
That’s an investment in the future made by partners that can definitely be trusted more than investors from the US or China. Data center != AI.
But they say its for AI in the article? Or perhaps its just marketing, i cant tell.
Exactly this!
With a bit of luck the bubble will burst before they get through all the red tape.
Always remember: datacenters are uniquely flammable, and most of them have backup generators with loads of fuel nearby…
