The quiet giants of the digital age | Commercial Awareness Compass #53

Across Europe, data centres are consuming power on a staggering scale. By 2030, they could require as much electricity as 100 million homes—about half of all households in Europe. A far cry from the anonymous concrete monoliths on industrial estates, data centres have become a major part of commercial conversation and evolved into critical infrastructure powering everything from streaming and cloud storage to artificial intelligence.But to build these, there are new challenges over power, land, and finance. Governments want growth, operators want efficiency, and lenders want assurance. As data centres swell in number and complexity, so do the deals that fund them. Who actually builds them? Who pays for them? And how do lawyers keep the lights on when the world’s servers never sleep?The Commercial Awareness Compass by AllAboutLaw, helps you build your commercial awareness every week with a beginners, intermediate and advanced breakdown of a story from an expert lawyer and trainee solicitor host. This story was taken from a live conversation a few months ago. If you don't want to wait for these conversations, head over to the Commercial Awareness Compass to get them straight to your inbox each week. 🚀 Boost your commercial awareness: https://www.allaboutlaw.co.uk/commercial-awareness-compass