Data centres are now an important part of the UK and Irish economies, supporting billions in economic activity and thousands of jobs. The current pipeline of data centre investment could substantially increase this contribution, creating economic benefits well beyond the facilities themselves and their roles in our digital economy.
Data centres are critical infrastructure for an increasingly digital economy. Their economic contribution is primarily in enabling cloud computing, AI and digital services from online banking to ecommerce. Around 95% of people in the UK and Ireland use the internet, while digital connectivity now underpins economic activity and employment across almost every sector.
Like any infrastructure, there are pros and cons, legitimate conversations to be had about where infrastructure is and isn’t built and at what size, about how it benefits local communities while mitigating the downsides of development, and on how much digital resiliency and sovereignty we want as nations. Increasingly, press coverage here and in the US has scrutinised the downsides of mega projects, hyperscale data centre sites in the 100s of MW scale, or even into GW scale.
There is a much broader ecosystem of digital infrastructure that keeps ‘the lights on’, however. KPMG's analysis of data centre operations in the UK and Ireland indicates that the sector already supports a significant and sustained economic footprint.
This includes employment within data centres themselves, activity across their supply chains and additional economic activity supported by the spending of employees.
