DESIGN & BUILD
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% of global hyperscale capacity located in the United States energy capacity, whilst Google has committed to achieving net-zero emissions across its operations by 2030.
The challenge extends beyond simply finding available power capacity to identifying strategic locations that can support long-term growth.“ Where do you find the power? Where are those hotspots of take-off?” asked Cara Mascini, Chief Sustainability Officer at Switch Datacenters, during the Global Hyperscale Strategies panel at Data Centre LIVE 2025.“ What we’ re doing is looking where it makes sense to set up a data centre and where we can integrate with a great company to solve some of their issues.”
However, the environmental challenges are significant. Despite ambitious climate goals, Microsoft’ s CO2 output increased 30 % since 2020, whilst Google’ s rose 48 % from 2019.
Geographic expansion and market dynamics Power constraints and land availability are driving hyperscale expansion into new markets. The traditional locations – Northern Virginia, Silicon Valley and other established tech hubs – are reaching capacity limits that force operators to consider secondary markets.
Atlanta absorbed 951MW in 2024 with another 2,159.3MW under construction, making it one of the fastest-growing hyperscale markets. The city offers relatively abundant power, land availability and good connectivity to major population centres. Similar patterns are emerging in Phoenix, Dallas and other secondary markets.
The scale of this geographic shift reflects broader market dynamics driving hyperscale expansion.“ There’ s a 20 % to 30 % growth globally on movement from in-house to cloudbased solutions, and the AI machine
154 September 2025