Germany's AI data centres: power prices, rules and compute in 2026

Germany wants to at least double its data centre capacity by 2030 while paying some of the highest electricity prices in the EU. Eurostat data for the second half of 2025 shows German power for the largest industrial users at about twice the French price. The Energy Efficiency Act sets binding efficiency, renewable power and waste heat rules for data centres, and a government bill adopted on 24 June 2026 would relax several of them.

This article walks through the numbers, the rules and the projects, with a source and date next to every figure. It is a plain-language guide, not investment advice or a forecast. Where sources disagree, or where no primary source confirms a point, the text says so.

Key numbers at a glance

• Electricity price for very large industrial users (70,000 to 149,999 MWh a year) in Germany, second half of 2025: 14.40 euro cents per kWh, excluding VAT and recoverable taxes. France: 7.15 cents. EU: 12.17 cents (Eurostat dataset nrg_pc_205, accessed 19 October 2026).
• Electricity price for mid-sized industrial users (500 to 1,999 MWh a year) in Germany, second half of 2025: 22.64 cents per kWh, the third highest of the 27 member states after Ireland and Cyprus. EU: 18.37 cents (Eurostat).
• Average household price in Germany in 2026 so far: 37.0 cents per kWh, of which grid fees are 9.24 cents, or 25% (BDEW electricity price analysis, August 2026).
• Federal electricity tax: 20.50 euros per MWh, or 2.05 cents per kWh (Electricity Tax Act, section 3, accessed 19 October 2026).
• Electricity generated and fed into the German grid in 2025: 438.2 TWh, with renewables at 58.6% (Destatis, 6 March 2026, preliminary).
• German net electricity imports in 2025: 19.4 TWh, from 79.6 TWh imported and 60.2 TWh exported (Destatis, 6 March 2026).
• Electricity use of German data centres and smaller IT installations: 21.3 TWh in 2025, up from 20 TWh in 2024 (Borderstep Institute for Bitkom, 10 November 2025).
• Connected load of all German data centres: 2,980 MW in 2025, of which about 530 MW is AI capacity (Bitkom, 10 November 2025).
• Average PUE of German data centres: 1.43 in 2025, down from 1.46 in 2024 (Bitkom and Borderstep study, November 2025).
• Forecast data centre demand: 31 TWh in 2030 and 80 TWh in 2045 (expert report for the economics ministry, 17 January 2025, as cited by the federal government on 31 July 2026).
• Current law, PUE for new data centres starting operation from 1 July 2026: 1.2 or better (Energy Efficiency Act, section 11).
• Current law, renewable power for data centres: 100% on a balance sheet basis from 1 January 2027. The cabinet bill of 24 June 2026 would move this to 1 January 2030 (section 11; CMS and Gleiss Lutz summaries of the bill).
• Industrial power price scheme: target price floor of 50 euros per MWh, billing years 2026 to 2028, applications from 2027 (BAFA, accessed 19 October 2026).
• EU AI Gigafactories call: up to seven facilities, submission deadline 12 November 2026 (EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, 30 July 2026).

A few terms first

A kilowatt hour (kWh) is the energy used by a one kilowatt device running for an hour. A megawatt hour (MWh) is 1,000 kWh, and a terawatt hour (TWh) is a billion kWh. A megawatt (MW) and a gigawatt (GW) measure power at a moment in time, not energy over a period. A data centre with 100 MW of connected load can draw up to 100 MW at once.

PUE, or power usage effectiveness, divides everything a data centre consumes by what its computers consume. A PUE of 1.0 would mean no overhead at all. A PUE of 1.5 means that for every 100 units of power used by servers, another 50 go to cooling, power conversion and other support.

A grid fee is the charge for using the wires. In Germany it is set under national rules and varies by region. A PPA, or power purchase agreement, is a long term contract to buy electricity from a specific generator, often a wind or solar farm. Waste heat is the heat servers produce, which can warm buildings if there is a district heating network nearby.

How much power do German data centres use?

The most cited current figures come from the Borderstep Institute, which calculates them for the industry association Bitkom. Bitkom said on 10 November 2025 that data centres in Germany would use 21.3 TWh of electricity in 2025, against 20 TWh in 2024 and 12 TWh in 2015. About two thirds of that goes to servers, storage and network equipment, and the rest to building systems such as cooling and uninterruptible power supplies. The total connected load of German data centres grew 9% in 2025 to 2,980 MW, and Bitkom expects it to pass 3,000 MW in early 2026 and 5,000 MW by 2030.

The AI share is still small but growing fastest. Bitkom puts AI data centre capacity at about 530 MW today, around 15% of the total, and expects 2,020 MW by 2030, about 40%. The accompanying study reports that the average PUE of German data centres improved to 1.43 in 2025 from 1.46 in 2024. These are industry figures from an association that lobbies for data centres, so they should be read as well researched estimates rather than official statistics.

The federal government uses the same numbers. In its answer to a parliamentary question, sent by the digital ministry on 31 July 2026 and printed as Bundestag document 21/7453, it cites the Borderstep figure of about 21.3 TWh for 2025. It also cites an expert report for the economics ministry, published on 17 January 2025, which expects German data centres to need 31 TWh in 2030 and 80 TWh in 2045. The second draft of the national grid development plan, under consultation at the Federal Network Agency, assumes data centre consumption of 78 to 116 TWh for 2037 and 2045, based on connection requests from large consumers. The government adds that total German electricity use has fallen in recent years despite data centre growth, so the data centre figure should not be read in isolation.

The same answer is candid about gaps. The government says it holds no comprehensive list of data centres being planned or built, partly because most are private investments, and that some project information it has was given in confidence. It also says the strategy measures capacity by IT connected load, because that is the measure that has become standard internationally, rather than by any direct measure of computing power.

For context, connected load is not the same as consumption. Data centres rarely run flat out. France's grid operator RTE reports that its transmission connected data centres use on average only 22% of the capacity they reserved, because new sites ramp up slowly. No German source located for this article measures the same gap, so it is a question to ask rather than a fact.

A related post, AI data centre electricity demand forecasts compared, sets these figures against other forecasts.

The national data centre strategy

The federal cabinet adopted Germany's first national data centre strategy on 18 March 2026. According to the digital ministry's press release that day, the goal is to at least double data centre capacity in Germany by 2030 and to at least quadruple capacity for AI and high performance computing. The strategy has 28 measures in three fields: energy and sustainability, location and land, and technology and sovereignty. The ministry says Germany has more than 2,000 data centre facilities.

On energy, the press release names faster grid connections, more renewable power through market purchases or on-site generation, and a focus on efficiency and waste heat. It does not set out specific price measures. On 18 September 2026 the ministry reported that 25 of the 28 measures had started, four were complete and five were in parliamentary procedure. The strategy is due to be updated every 12 months, and the government's July answer says a first quantitative check on the capacity target is planned for the end of the current parliamentary term.

Money for private sites is limited. The government's July answer says there is no federal funding programme specifically for building or expanding private data centres. If a German consortium wins in the EU gigafactory competition, the federal government would support it by guaranteeing to buy computing time. A budget line for distributed data infrastructure and AI under an EU cross-border project known as IPCEI-CIC holds up to 5 million euros in 2026, and the draft 2027 plan proposes 80 million euros.

What does power cost in Germany?

Eurostat publishes invoiced prices by consumption band. The numbers below exclude VAT and other recoverable taxes, which is the standard way to compare business prices, and cover the second half of 2025. They come from Eurostat's non-household price dataset, accessed on 19 October 2026.

For the 500 to 1,999 MWh a year band, a mid-sized factory or a small data hall, Germany paid 22.64 cents per kWh. France paid 15.34 cents and the EU average was 18.37 cents. Among the 27 member states, only Ireland at 25.52 cents and Cyprus at 24.29 cents were higher. For the 70,000 to 149,999 MWh a year band, closer to the scale of a large data centre, Germany paid 14.40 cents, France 7.15 cents and the EU 12.17 cents. In that band Germany ranked eighth of the 25 member states with published data, behind Cyprus, Czechia, Ireland, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania. So Germany is among the most expensive EU countries for large users and well above the EU average, but not the most expensive in the largest bands.

Two other patterns stand out. The gap between Germany and France grows with size: about 48% for mid-sized users and about twice as much for very large ones. And German prices for very large users barely moved over the three half years Eurostat shows: 14.30 cents in the second half of 2024, 14.47 in the first half of 2025 and 14.40 in the second half. France moved from 8.18 to 8.20 to 7.15.

The German energy industry association BDEW reaches similar figures from a different survey. Its August 2026 price analysis puts the 2025 price for large industry, 70 to 150 million kWh a year, at 14.4 cents per kWh, slightly up on the year before, and the 2026 price so far for small and mid-sized industrial supply contracts at 17.2 cents. It notes a price rise linked to the Iran war at the most recent data point. For households, BDEW gives an average of 37.0 cents per kWh in 2026, split into about 41% for procurement and sales, 25% for grid fees and 34% for taxes, levies and surcharges. Grid fees fell by 1.7 cents per kWh, which BDEW attributes to a federal subsidy for transmission grid fees.

Taxes and the industrial power price

The federal electricity tax is 20.50 euros per MWh, or 2.05 cents per kWh, under section 3 of the Electricity Tax Act. Section 9b grants manufacturing, agricultural and forestry businesses a relief of 20 euros per MWh, which leaves them paying 0.50 euros per MWh. The federal government said in December 2025 that this lower rate for manufacturing firms and farmers would stay in place permanently from 2026. The section does not mention data centres, and whether an operator qualifies depends on whether it counts as a manufacturing business.

Bitkom has argued for years that electricity costs other than the energy itself hurt data centres. In a press release of 24 January 2020, using 2019 data, it said German data centres paid 113.11 euros per MWh in taxes, levies and grid fees, the highest in Europe, against 29.31 euros in France and 17.08 euros in the Netherlands. It named the renewable energy surcharge, known as the EEG levy, as the largest driver. That comparison is now dated. BDEW's August 2026 breakdown of the household price lists the electricity tax, the offshore grid levy, a surcharge for special network use, the combined heat and power levy and the concession fee, but no EEG levy. In its November 2025 release Bitkom still described German energy prices as very high by European standards and a substantial competitive disadvantage.

Germany has also introduced a subsidised industrial power price. The economics ministry said the European Commission approved the scheme on 16 April 2026. According to the federal office BAFA, which runs it, the scheme covers billing years 2026 to 2028. Aid is generally half of a reference price, with a target price of 50 euros per MWh as the floor a company must still pay, and applies to 50% of eligible consumption. Only sites in sectors on a specific EU list of industries at significant risk of relocation qualify, recipients must invest at least half of the basic aid in decarbonisation, and the first applications, for 2026, open in 2027. The BAFA page does not mention data centres.

The Federal Network Agency, which regulates the grid, also shows policy still moving. Its news page lists a consultation opened on 6 August 2026 on reforming the electricity network tariff system, and a tender for long term capacity under a security of supply law that closed for bids on 8 September 2026. Neither item is about data centres by name, but both affect what large consumers pay and how reliable supply is.

What the Energy Efficiency Act requires today

The German Energy Efficiency Act, known as the EnEfG, is the clearest set of binding rules aimed at data centres. The summary below follows sections 11 and 12 as published on the official legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026.

Efficiency (section 11). Data centres that started operating before 1 July 2026 must reach a PUE of 1.5 or better from 1 July 2027, and 1.3 or better on an annual average from 1 July 2030. New data centres that start operating from 1 July 2026 must achieve a PUE of 1.2 or better.

Reused energy (section 11). New data centres must also reuse part of their energy, measured under the European standard DIN EN 50600-4-6. The minimum share is 10% for starts from 1 July 2026, a planned 15% for starts from 1 July 2027 and a planned 20% for starts from 1 July 2028. Both the PUE and reuse targets must be met on an annual average within two years of commissioning.

Exemptions for waste heat. The reuse rule does not apply if the operator can show one of three things. Events outside its control prevented the share. Or it has an agreement with a nearby municipality or heat network operator that states an intent to build or permit heat networks within ten years, with an investment plan, cost sharing and a heat price. Or a nearby heat network operator has declined a cost price offer for the heat within six months even though the data centre has the connection equipment in place.

Renewable power (section 11). From 1 January 2024, half of a data centre's electricity consumption must be covered by renewable power on a balance sheet basis. From 1 January 2027 the share rises to 100%. Balance sheet basis means the operator can match consumption with purchased renewable electricity over a period, for example through a PPA or certificates, rather than every kilowatt hour being renewable in the same hour.

Management systems (section 12). Operators had to set up an energy or environmental management system by 1 July 2025. From 1 January 2026, validation or certification of that system is required for data centres with a non redundant rated connected load of 1 MW or more, and for public sector data centres of 300 kW or more. There is an exemption if at least 50% of reused energy goes into a district heating network and annual energy use stays at or below 7.5 GWh.

The reform bill now in parliament

The federal cabinet adopted a bill on 24 June 2026 to speed up transposition of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, which amends the EnEfG. A Bundestag news item of 28 July 2026 says the bill is in the parliamentary process. The government's 31 July answer says the amended Act would make the PUE requirement stricter. Two law firm summaries of the cabinet draft, from CMS on 1 July 2026 and from Gleiss Lutz, describe the data centre changes in more detail. They agree with each other on the main points, and on existing data centres they describe higher, meaning looser, PUE limits than the current text:

• Existing data centres would need a PUE of 1.6 from 1 July 2027 instead of 1.5, and 1.4 from 1 July 2030 instead of 1.3.
• New data centres would keep the 1.2 PUE limit, but would have four years after commissioning to reach it on an annual average instead of two. An earlier ministry draft of 4 May 2026 had proposed 1.3, which the cabinet version dropped.
• The 100% renewable power requirement would move from 1 January 2027 to 1 January 2030, with the 50% share in force since 2024 continuing until then.
• Reuse of waste heat for the operator's own needs, such as heating offices, would count toward the reuse share, and the minimum would not apply where a heat network connection is not technically and economically feasible.

These are summaries of a bill, not the law in force. The figures in the previous section remain the legal text until parliament passes the amendment and it is published. Anyone planning a site should check the consolidated text and the bill's progress before relying on either set of numbers.

Where the electricity comes from

German power has become cleaner, and it now relies on trade with neighbours. Destatis reported on 6 March 2026 that 438.2 TWh of electricity was generated and fed into the grid in 2025, 1.4% more than in 2024. Renewables supplied 58.6%, down from 59.5% the year before. Wind produced 131.3 TWh and solar 70.1 TWh, a record for solar. Coal produced 96.8 TWh and natural gas 70.6 TWh, also a record for gas in the series. Germany imported 79.6 TWh and exported 60.2 TWh, a net import of 19.4 TWh. These figures are preliminary.

The last three nuclear plants, Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2, went offline on 15 April 2023, according to the federal nuclear waste safety office BASE. The Coal Phase-out Act requires coal-fired capacity to fall to zero by the end of 2038 at the latest. The Renewable Energy Sources Act sets a target of at least 80% renewables in gross electricity consumption by 2030.

That mix matters for data centres because a site's grid connection is as important as its electricity price. A cheap supply is of little use if the local grid cannot deliver it, and the data centre strategy lists faster grid connections among its energy measures.

The Federal Network Agency's news list shows both sides of the supply story. An onshore wind auction that closed on 1 August 2026 was reported on 17 September 2026 as heavily oversubscribed, which signals developer appetite. On 1 September 2026 the agency reported that no ban on coal fired operation was required again in its coal phase-out review.

France is a useful comparison, with a grid dominated by nuclear power and exports. A related post, France's AI data centres, nuclear power and grid access, sets out those numbers.

The compute projects

Policy and prices matter because projects are being built.

JUPITER. The JUPITER supercomputer at Forschungszentrum Jülich was inaugurated on 5 September 2025. The North Rhine-Westphalia state government described it that day as Europe's first exascale class supercomputer and one of the four most powerful systems in the world. It cost about 500 million euros, half paid by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and a quarter each by the federal government and the state. The release does not give a power draw.

AI Factories. The European Commission's AI Factories page, last updated on 12 August 2026, says 19 AI Factories and 13 antennas are being set up across Europe. Two are in Germany, named JAIF (the Jupiter AI Factory) and HammerHAI. One is in France, called AI2F.

Industrial AI Cloud in Munich. Deutsche Telekom and Nvidia announced a data centre in Munich with up to 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, more than 1,000 DGX B200 systems and RTX PRO servers, and a value of over one billion euros. The Decoder reported on 4 November 2025 that Telekom says it will raise German AI computing power by 50%. That is a company statement. The same report says the project is privately funded and separate from the EU gigafactory programme. SAP, Polarise and Agile Robots were named as early partners. The report does not give a power figure or a completion date.

AI Gigafactories. The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking launched a call on 30 July 2026 for up to seven AI Gigafactories in at least seven member states. Applications close on 12 November 2026, selection is expected in early 2027 and selected facilities are expected to begin operating within 18 months. Expected private investment is over 20 billion euros, with joint EU and national public funding acting as an anchor customer. The European Commission says each facility is planned to bring together more than 100,000 advanced AI processors. The EuroHPC page does not name any gigafactory site in Germany or France. A related post, Europe's AI infrastructure in 2026, covers the programme in more detail.

What is firm and what is uncertain

Firm, because an official or primary source states it:

• Eurostat's industrial price figures and rankings for the second half of 2025.
• The text of sections 11 and 12 of the Energy Efficiency Act and sections 3 and 9b of the Electricity Tax Act, as published on the legal portal on 19 October 2026.
• Destatis generation and trade figures for 2025, which are still marked preliminary.
• The strategy's targets and progress count, the government's July 2026 answer to parliament, and the BAFA scheme rules.
• The gigafactory call dates and the number of AI Factories.

Reasonably supported, but from an industry body, a company or a law firm:

• The 21.3 TWh consumption figure, the 2,980 MW connected load and the 1.43 average PUE, which come from Borderstep's work for Bitkom, though the government cites the consumption figure.
• The content of the June 2026 EnEfG bill, which comes from two consistent law firm summaries rather than the bill text.
• The Munich Industrial AI Cloud details, which come from a company statement relayed by a news outlet.

Uncertain or not confirmed:

• Whether and when parliament passes the EnEfG amendment, and in what form.
• Long range demand. The 2030 and 2045 forecasts and the grid plan range of 78 to 116 TWh rest on different methods and connection requests that may not all be built.
• Whether any data centre operator can use the manufacturing tax relief or the industrial power price. Neither source names data centres.
• How much of the reserved data centre grid capacity in Germany is actually used.

What to watch next

• 30 October 2026. Eurostat's planned update of its electricity price statistics article, which will show whether Germany's position in the large user bands holds.
• 12 November 2026. The gigafactory call closes. Which consortia apply, and where, will say more about German appetite than any speech.
• The EnEfG vote. If the bill passes before 1 January 2027, the 100% renewable deadline for data centres moves to 2030. If not, the current text applies on that date.
• Early 2027. The EuroHPC selection of gigafactory sites, and the first applications under the industrial power price scheme.
• 18 March 2027. The first annual update of the data centre strategy is due around this date.
• 1 July 2027. The first efficiency milestone for existing data centres, a PUE of 1.5 under current law or 1.6 under the bill.
• The tariff reform. The Federal Network Agency's consultation on how grid fees are structured, opened on 6 August 2026.

What this means in practice

For anyone running or buying AI workloads in Germany, the practical effect is cost and compliance. Electricity is a large share of a data centre's running costs. In the second half of 2025, Eurostat data place Germany third highest in the EU for mid-sized business users and eighth of 25 for the largest users, and above the EU average in both bands. The two price relief schemes, the reduced electricity tax and the industrial power price, are written for manufacturing and listed industrial sectors, not for data centres by name.

Operators respond by seeking long term renewable contracts, by choosing sites near surplus wind generation or heat customers, and by pricing the efficiency rules into contracts. Buyers can ask where a workload actually runs, what PUE the site reports under the Act, and how the provider plans to meet the renewable requirement under either the current 2027 date or the proposed 2030 date.

Software teams inherit some of this indirectly, as energy reporting duties and supplier questionnaires land on security and compliance teams as well as facilities teams. Safeguard offers SBOM and dependency scanning, with a free scan at https://gold.safeguard.sh/scan.

Quick check

Sources

• Electricity prices for non-household consumers, bi-annual data (nrg_pc_205), Eurostat, accessed 19 October 2026
• Electricity price statistics, Eurostat Statistics Explained, accessed 19 October 2026
• BDEW Strompreisanalyse, August 2026, BDEW, August 2026
• Stromsteuergesetz, section 3, Federal Ministry of Justice legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026
• Stromsteuergesetz, section 9b, Federal Ministry of Justice legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026
• Gesetzliche Neuregelungen Januar 2026, Federal Government, 29 December 2025
• Industriestrompreis, BAFA, accessed 19 October 2026
• Energieeffizienzgesetz, section 11, Federal Ministry of Justice legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026
• Energieeffizienzgesetz, section 12, Federal Ministry of Justice legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026
• EnEfG-Novelle bringt Entlastung für Rechenzentren, CMS, 1 July 2026
• Update Rechenzentren: Gesetzentwurf zur Änderung des Energieeffizienzgesetzes liegt vor, Gleiss Lutz, accessed 19 October 2026
• Wirtschaft und Energie, Antwort, hib 613/2026, Deutscher Bundestag, 28 July 2026
• Antwort der Bundesregierung: Monitoring des Ausbaus von Rechenkapazität, Drucksache 21/7453, Deutscher Bundestag, 31 July 2026
• Bundesregierung beschließt Rechenzentrumsstrategie, Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation, 18 March 2026
• Halbjahresbilanz Rechenzentrumsstrategie, Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation, 18 September 2026
• Rechenzentren in Deutschland: KI treibt Wachstum, Bitkom, 10 November 2025
• Rechenzentren in Deutschland: Aktuelle Marktentwicklungen (Update 2025), Bitkom and Borderstep Institute, November 2025
• Deutsche Rechenzentren haben höchste Stromkosten in Europa, Bitkom, 24 January 2020
• Stromerzeugung aus Photovoltaik und Erdgas erreicht im Jahr 2025 neue Höchstwerte, Destatis, 6 March 2026
• Abschaltung der Atomkraftwerke Isar 2, Emsland und Neckarwestheim 2, BASE, accessed 19 October 2026
• Kohleverstromungsbeendigungsgesetz, section 2, Federal Ministry of Justice legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026
• Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, section 1, Federal Ministry of Justice legal portal, accessed 19 October 2026
• Bundesnetzagentur news, Bundesnetzagentur, accessed 19 October 2026
• Einweihung des ersten europäischen Exascale-Supercomputers JUPITER, Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, 5 September 2025
• AI Factories, European Commission, last updated 12 August 2026
• EuroHPC Joint Undertaking launches AI Gigafactories call, EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, 30 July 2026
• 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs set to increase Germany's AI capacity by 50 percent, The Decoder, 4 November 2025
• Annual Electricity Review 2025: consumption, RTE, accessed 19 October 2026

Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.