Denmark has become an unlikely flashpoint in Europe’s battle over who gets power and who is left behind. In March 2025, state-owned grid operator Energinet halted all new grid connection agreements after receiving requests totaling 60 GW, almost nine times the country’s maximum power demand of 7 GW. Data centers alone make up 14 gigawatts of that queue.
The growth in applications is being driven by a collision of forces: the energy transition, accelerating digitalization, and an AI infrastructure arms race that is compressing decades of demand into a few years.
Energinet has described incoming applications as “exploding”, and the mismatch between ambition and available capacity has forced a rare administrative halt.
Data Center Industry Association (DDI) CEO Henrik Hansen told CNBC that the spike has created a “hypothetical” queue. It is not possible to rush into all kinds of connection agreements as power is not available,” he said, calling for strict criteria around project maturity and actual investment commitment before the application can proceed.
Officially this ban has been fixed for three months, but industry insiders say that its extension cannot be ruled out. In Denmark, no political decisions can be taken until a new government is formed after the general election, leaving Energienet in a regulatory holding pattern.
Before the vote, Energy Minister Lars Aagaard hinted that data centers could be pushed to the back of the queue behind Danish domestic customers.
According to DDI data, Denmark currently has approximately 398 MW of installed data center capacity, with 208 MW under construction and a projected increase of 1.2 GW by 2030. Hyperscalers Microsoft, Google and similar operators account for 60% of the existing capacity. Microsoft alone has committed to invest $3 billion in Danish infrastructure between 2023 and 2027.
For global operators, regulatory uncertainty is a minor problem. Diana Hodnett, Google’s global director of data center public affairs, said companies move quickly when moratoriums lack clear timelines. “I’m not sure governments and TSOs realize how quickly this can happen,” he told CNBC, citing the speed at which investment decisions are shifting to other markets.
Pernille Hofmann, Managing Director of Nordics at Digital Realty, put it simply: “If you can’t locate your AI workloads in Denmark, you will move them elsewhere.”
Soren Dupont Christensen, Energinet’s chief operating officer, called it a “window of opportunity” to redesign the regulatory framework before the development moves forward with full governance.
