AWS has put European datacenter expansion on hold after grid connection timelines blew out to seven years in key markets including Italy and Spain.
The delays expose a fundamental mismatch: AWS can build a datacenter in two years, but securing grid connections now takes more than three times as long. Pamela MacDougall, AWS's head of energy markets and regulation for EMEA, told Reuters that "certainty of delivery date has continued to be delayed" across the continent.
This isn't a Europe-specific problem. Northern Virginia - the world's largest datacenter market - faces identical seven-year waits. The pattern is clear: AI workloads have overwhelmed grid planning assumptions. Typical rack densities jumped from 6-12 kW to 140 kW since ChatGPT launched in 2022, with 600 kW systems coming next year.
The root causes are institutional. Europe's first-come, first-served permitting system has clogged queues with speculative projects. The European Commission proposed capping grid approval processes at two years, but energy infrastructure manufacturers can't keep pace with demand regardless of regulatory timelines.
Hyperscalers are responding by going around the grid entirely. AWS bought Talen Energy's Cumulus datacenter campus - located next to a nuclear plant - last year. Microsoft and Meta are backing reactor restart projects. The message: if you can't connect to the grid, buy the power plant.
AWS joined GIGA, an industry group with Meta, Google, and Fastned, to lobby for grid modernization. The US provides a preview of what's coming: 95% of queued generation projects are renewable or storage, but baseload capacity is contracting. PJM Interconnection fast-tracked 11.8 GW of mostly gas generation to fill the gap.
For enterprise tech leaders planning multi-region deployments, this matters. The hyperscalers are hitting infrastructure limits that won't clear quickly. Grid planning cycles measure in decades, not quarters. AWS pausing expansion in major European markets isn't a bump - it's the new constraint.