Investing in Data Centres: When the Grid Says No
European Data Centres, Read from the Gulf | Part Three of Seven
Written by Lanre Okunnuga, August 2026
On 18 June 2026, stc filed a routine disclosure with the Tadawul, Saudi Arabia's stock exchange. Its joint venture with HUMAIN, announced as an MOU the previous December for up to 1 gigawatt of AI data centre capacity through Center3, stc's data centre subsidiary, needed six more months. The filing gave a reason: "regulatory and operational requirements still outstanding." Nothing further. The initial phase, up to 250 megawatts, remained "subject to customer commitments."
That single phrase is the most Saudi Arabia's flagship AI infrastructure project has said publicly about why it slipped. The filing names no specific requirement, no regulator, and no missing customer commitment. A properly met disclosure obligation, filed on time, to the exchange, saying almost nothing about the mechanism behind the delay.
The filing did exactly what a listed company's disclosure obligation requires. The observation here is about what that obligation is built to produce, rather than any fault in how stc met it. A reader outside the deal, an allocator deciding whether to commit capital nearby, learns that something slipped and nothing about why.
Now hold that next to Ireland.
The Most Documented Grid in Europe
Ireland has spent four years publishing almost everything about how it manages data centre demand. In 2021, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities effectively halted new grid connections in the Greater Dublin Area, concerned that data centres were heading toward using a third of the country's electricity. Between then and December 2025, exactly one project received a post-moratorium connection offer: EdgeConneX's DUB04 and DUB05.
In December 2025 the CRU published its decision. It was a conditional reopening, set out in detail, rather than a lifting of the moratorium. Any data centre drawing 1 megavolt-ampere or more must source at least 80 percent of its annual electricity from new Irish renewable generation within six years of switching on. Above 10 megavolt-amperes, it must also provide dispatchable generation or storage matching the capacity it draws from the grid. The rules are published, dated, and specific.
The scale behind that decision is public too. A market intelligence exercise carried out by EirGrid, ESB Networks, and Gas Networks Ireland, commissioned by the CRU, found potential for an additional 5.8 gigawatts of data centre demand capacity in the medium term, on top of what is already contracted. That figure very nearly equals Ireland's entire national peak electricity demand. It measures demand rather than counting refused or stranded projects.
Set against Saudi Arabia's single unexplained phrase, Ireland looks like the answer to the transparency problem. A jurisdiction that tells you exactly what the rules are, exactly how much demand is pushing against them, and exactly what a developer has to build to qualify.
What the Published Rules Do Not Yet Tell You
The CRU's December decision set the terms. It did not set the process. EirGrid and ESB Networks were due to publish the detailed data centre engagement and connection process, the actual mechanics of how an application moves from filing to connection offer, by 31 March 2026, three and a half months after the rules themselves. Even with that process now in place, legal commentary from Pinsent Masons has flagged that the market still needs clarity on the rights and obligations around termination and reduction of import capacity, meaning what happens to an approved connection if circumstances change is not yet fully specified.
One answer has already emerged since the rules published. EirGrid and ESB Networks jointly issued a Data Centre Constrained Area Overview in May 2026. It maps which parts of the network qualify as "unconstrained" under the locational test built into the greater-than-10-megavolt-ampere tier. Legal commentary from Mason Hayes Curran, reviewing that map in June 2026, states the result plainly: Dublin is currently entirely constrained. A data centre proposing to connect anywhere in the capital fails the location test the CRU wrote into its own rules six months earlier, regardless of how much renewable generation or on-site dispatchable capacity it brings. Roughly 97 percent of Ireland's existing data centres sit in the Dublin region. The published rules answered the process question. The map answered the outcome question, and for the market's largest cluster, the answer is no.
DC Byte's own framing of the reopening puts it plainly: policy clarity brings 2026 throughput, backlogs dictate 2027 and beyond. Knowing the rules is not the same as knowing the outcome. An applicant reading the CRU's decision today can price the requirements with total precision and still cannot tell you, with any precision, what happens to their specific application, or when, unless that application sits in the one place where the answer is already public and already no.
Ireland has published the rules of a game whose result it still cannot promise. For its own capital it has already promised no.
One Company, Two Outcomes, Same Address
Vantage Data Centers holds the clearest illustration of what that uncertainty costs. Two facts sit in its accounts and they should be held apart.
In April 2025, An Bord Pleanála refused Vantage's appeal for a site referred to as DUB13, case ABP-317446-23. The board's own planning inspector had recommended approval. The board disagreed. It found Vantage had not demonstrated a fixed grid connection agreement for the site, and noted that a data centre relying primarily on on-site fossil generation ran contrary to national policy. That is a refusal explicitly and publicly grounded in the grid.
Separately, Vantage's accounts show a €152 million impairment charge and a further €152 million tenant compensation liability tied to construction delays on the same Dublin campus complex. The accounts attribute this to construction delays. They do not attribute it to the grid.
Same operator, same corporate family, same site complex. One outcome has a case number, a stated ground, and a published reason. The other has a nine-figure number and a cause the company has not connected to the constraint sitting next door. The record shows one proven cause and one unproven one, sitting in the same set of accounts.
What Revealed Preference Says
A grid constraint that was killing demand would see capital stop showing up. That has not happened. Echelon Data Centres raised €1.7 billion in 2026, partly earmarked for on-site generation built specifically to route around the connection constraint rather than wait for it. EirGrid's own median growth scenario puts data centre demand rising from 22 percent of national electricity in 2024 to 31 percent by 2034. A meaningful share of that growth is capacity that already holds a connection agreement and simply has not finished construction.
Two independent signals point the same direction: a regulator's own forecast, and an operator raising real money specifically to work around the constraint. Capital has chased infrastructure stories that did not pay off before, and an MOU is not a contract anywhere in this series, so neither signal proves the case alone. Together they leave little doubt about the underlying demand. What stays uncertain is which specific project clears the process, and when, outside the one area where that question has already been answered.
The Gulf Side of the Same Question
Saudi Arabia's connection process for large loads exists, but it is not published the way Ireland's is. The Saudi Arabian Grid Code contains a Connection Code governing transmission connections, network impact studies, and connection offers. It explicitly allows a developer to build or co-fund its own substation, or to pursue captive generation, a third option beyond waiting or walking away. What is not publicly available is the elapsed time a real application takes, or a demand figure comparable to Ireland's 5.8 gigawatts, or a constrained-area map comparable to the one EirGrid just published.
The UAE gap is starker still. DEWA and Etihad Water and Electricity publish infrastructure investment figures, substation counts, and capacity added in megavolt-amperes. They publish nothing resembling a rules-based connection policy for large loads at data centre scale. DEWA's only public consumer connection product tops out at 150 kilowatts, a fraction of what a single data centre hall requires.
The Gulf's process may be no worse than Ireland's. It is not visible in the same way, to the same audience, at the same level of detail. That is precisely the condition Digital Infrastructure Ireland's own chairman, Maurice Mortell, has put a number on for Ireland's side of the ledger: roughly €5.8 billion in Irish data centre projects that hold planning permission and land but no grid connection. He has called them stranded or marooned. That figure comes from industry, not from the CRU or EirGrid directly. Other estimates from KPMG and construction consultancies put the same phenomenon anywhere between €5.6 billion and €7.8 billion. Even inside the most transparent jurisdiction in this comparison, the size of the problem depends on who is doing the counting.
The Question an Allocator Actually Needs Answered
Every jurisdiction in this series paces its own build-out somehow. What varies is whether an outside investor would know about the pacing in the way they now know about Vantage, and in the way Dublin's own developers now know about Dublin.
Risk that cannot be quantified tends to get priced conservatively, or avoided outright. That is an inference from how capital generally behaves rather than a documented finding in either market examined here.
A sovereign deploying its own capital has no disclosure problem, because it already knows exactly what it knows. The question only arises the moment a jurisdiction wants capital from outside. Every announcement this series has examined exists because someone wanted outside money to notice. What that money gets to see, once it looks closely, is not the same in every case, even when every jurisdiction involved is acting in good faith. In Ireland the rules are public, the process is public, and for the market's own capital the outcome is public too, once you look closely enough to find the map.
Next Article: Britain counted its connection queue and found more claimed data centre demand than the country consumes at peak. Germany moved a statutory deadline three years. Neither market refuses at the gate, and both are rewriting the terms while capital is already committed.
Note for the reader: This is analysis of how these markets are structured and financed, written by someone who spends his time following how capital moves across borders and into infrastructure. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation on any asset, programme or jurisdiction.
Sources
An Bord Pleanála refusal, case ABP-317446-23, DUB13 — An Bord Pleanála decision, April 2025
CRU Large Energy User Connection Policy decision, tiered MVA framework, 80% renewable/6-year glide path, dispatchable generation above 10MVA — CRU2025236 Decision Paper, 12 Dec 2025
5.8GW additional data centre demand capacity, medium term — Irish Times, citing EirGrid/ESB Networks/Gas Networks Ireland market intelligence exercise commissioned by CRU, 15 Dec 2025
€5.8bn in permitted, unconnected Irish data centre projects ("stranded"/"marooned") — Maurice Mortell, Chairman, Digital Infrastructure Ireland, via Irish Times, Data Center Dynamics, Barron's, 13 Oct / 16 Oct / 19 Nov 2025
€5.6bn-€7.8bn range on same phenomenon — KPMG, construction consultancy estimates, 2025-2026
SOs required to publish engagement/connection process — CRU2025236 Decision Paper, 12 Dec 2025
Termination/reduction of import capacity rights still needing clarity — Pinsent Masons commentary, Dec 2025
Data Centre Constrained Area Overview published; Dublin currently entirely constrained — EirGrid/ESB Networks overview; Mason Hayes Curran commentary, May 2026 / 17 June 2026
~97% of Ireland's data centres located in Dublin region — Ireland Reshapes Data Centre Grid Access (re24.energy), citing CRU2025236, Dec 2025
"Policy clarity brings 2026 throughput, backlogs dictate 2027 and beyond" — DC Byte, 2026
Echelon Data Centres €1.7bn raise, 2026 — Echelon Data Centres, 2026
EirGrid median growth scenario: 22% (2024) to 31% (2034) of national electricity — EirGrid / William Fry, Mondaq commentary, 2026
Vantage €152m impairment, €152m tenant compensation liability — Vantage Data Centers accounts, n.d.
stc/HUMAIN Tadawul filing, six-month extension, "regulatory and operational requirements still outstanding" — Tadawul disclosure, 18 June 2026
Saudi Arabian Grid Code, Connection Code provisions — Saudi Arabian Grid Code, n.d.
DEWA / Etihad Water and Electricity published infrastructure disclosures; DEWA Al Namoos consumer product capped at 150kW — DEWA / EtihadWE public disclosures, 2026