Noord-Holland expects dozens of additional data centres by 2035

Noord-Holland expects the number of data centres in the province to grow from 67 today to 92 by 2035, an increase of more than 37 percent. This is the finding of research conducted by advisory firm Dialogic on behalf of the province. An interim milestone is a projected total of 83 data centres by 2030.

The province says it welcomes new establishments but is attaching stricter conditions regarding residual heat and water use. Deputy Commissioner Esther Rommel (VVD) has commented on the policy. Around twenty permit applications are currently in the licensing phase.

Clusters in Haarlemmermeer, Amsterdam and Hollands Kroon are filling up

Most data centres in Noord-Holland are concentrated around three areas: Haarlemmermeer, Amsterdam and Hollands Kroon. Google and Microsoft, among others, are already based in Hollands Kroon; Microsoft previously announced expansion plans. The province prefers new establishments to remain within these existing clusters, at locations where sufficient energy is available.

That space is finite, however. The clusters in Noord-Holland are filling up, and the province is therefore entering into discussions with inter-governmental partners about forming clusters elsewhere in the Netherlands. In doing so, Noord-Holland implicitly acknowledges that the sector's growth cannot be accommodated indefinitely within its own borders.

Stricter requirements for residual heat and water use

Data centres in Noord-Holland are required to configure their installations so that residual heat can readily be transferred to a heat company or direct end user. This requirement has been in place for some time, but the province is raising the bar for both residual heat utilisation and water consumption in its Datacenterstrategie 2025-2027, the successor to the strategy that ran from 2022 through 2024.

Nationally, data centres consume approximately one million cubic metres of tap water per year, equating to 0.083 percent of total Dutch tap water consumption, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The sector's direct CO2 emissions amount to 0.004 percent of the national total, according to the Nederlandse Emissieautoriteit. The European data centre sector has committed, through the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, to achieving climate neutrality by 2030.

The Omgevingsdienst Noordzeekanaalgebied is responsible for permit issuance and supervision. Larger data centres with a thermal capacity of emergency power supplies exceeding 50 megawatts fall directly under the competent authority of the province.

Pressure on the electricity grid remains a bottleneck

The electricity grid in Noord-Holland is already under strain, and further expansion of the energy infrastructure is needed to accommodate the planned growth. The province expects the sector itself to come up with solutions to limit grid load. No specific measures or agreements to that effect have been detailed in the available source material.

The combination of high energy demand, scarce grid capacity and increasing competition for space within existing clusters makes the challenge for the province complex. Noord-Holland positions itself as a digital innovation hub and wants to preserve the sector's economic value, but must at the same time respect physical and infrastructural limits.

For other provinces and for policymakers at the national level, the Noord-Holland situation is illustrative: growth in AI-related computing capacity is intensifying pressure on establishment sites, energy grids and water supply. The fact that the province is now actively pursuing the distribution of new clusters beyond its own borders shows that data centre policy is increasingly less a local matter and increasingly requires regional and national coordination.