Poland Shows Why Data Centers are Becoming Europe’s New Strategic Infrastructure

Poland has become one of Europe’s most dynamic data centre markets in just a few years, and its development is increasingly seen as a model for digital infrastructure investment. Piotr Kowalski of the Polish Data Center Association says Poland is now positioned to take over part of the demand from saturated European hubs, while building the energy, construction, and technology base for the next phase of growth.

“Poland is considered a tier-two market, a secondary market that is taking over demand from tier-one markets such as Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin,” Kowalski explains. The turning point came in 2020, when Microsoft established its cloud region in Poland and decided to build its own data centre in Warsaw. Google and AWS followed with cloud regions based on colocation services.

The expansion has been rapid. “Since then, the Polish market has grown from 70 megawatts of IT capacity to around 220 megawatts today,” Kowalski says. By 2030, the market is expected to reach 500 to 600 megawatts of IT capacity, almost tripling its size. Longer-term projections are linked to the development of the high-voltage transmission grid, where investment plans allow for up to three gigawatts of data centre capacity by 2035 and four to five gigawatts by 2040.

For countries such as Croatia, where large data centre and AI infrastructure projects are increasingly debated, the Polish experience shows that these projects are not only about buildings, servers, and electricity. They are industrial undertakings that involve site selection, energy, design, construction, engineering, equipment, operations, and the economy’s position in the digital value chain.

Kowalski stresses that data centres are highly capital-intensive. “One megawatt of data centre capacity is about 10 to 12 million euros of CapEx when we are talking only about the real estate part,” he says. On top of that, he adds, there can be roughly 40 million dollars per megawatt of IT capacity for the servers inside the facility. Data centres, therefore, do not only create technology capacity; they trigger a much broader investment cycle.

The Polish Data Center Association has prepared an Ecosystem Guide mapping the value chain, from site acquisition to operations. “We found that 57 percent of the companies involved in the value chain are either Polish or have a manufacturing facility in Poland,” Kowalski says. In his view, the effect does not stop with data centre operators. It spreads into industry, employment, and the development of specialised expertise. Early indicators show that the data centre industry in Poland already affects around 50,000 employees.

Another dimension is just as important, though often less visible. “Data centres are the backbone of the digital economy,” Kowalski notes. The services users access every day on smartphones are running in data centres in the background. Users expect instant and uninterrupted access, but rarely connect the mobile phone in their hands with the infrastructure that makes this availability possible.

Poland also has a specific advantage. As a colder country with the second-largest district heating network in Europe, it can use data centre waste heat to help decarbonise heating systems. “Data centres can be a great source of waste heat,” Kowalski says, adding that this is a hidden benefit for local communities.

At the European level, Kowalski describes data centre development as a major investment boom. The European Commission, he says, has set a target of tripling data centre capacity within five to seven years. “That is huge growth,” Kowalski concludes. What matters is that the target is geographically balanced. Today, the industry is concentrated in a few cities, not just a few countries. For Poland, Croatia, and similar markets, the message is clear: data centres are no longer a technology niche, but infrastructure that may determine where the next layer of Europe’s digital economy will develop.