Every figure on a ScienceShot tool, tracker or market page comes from one of our own datasets. This page explains what those datasets hold, what gets into them, how often we check them again, and what we do when we get something wrong.
Our datasets
We compile each dataset ourselves from material that is published and can be opened and read: planning files, permits, regulatory decisions, statements by grid operators, market data and manufacturers’ specifications. For every row we keep a private record of the document it rests on and the day we read it. Those records stay internal. What you see on the site is the result, dated.
Under each tool you’ll find a line that reads “ScienceShot dataset, checked” and a date. The date is read from the dataset when the page loads, so it moves forward each time we check the data again. The table below works the same way.
| Dataset | What it holds | Rechecked | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| European data-centre pipeline | Data-centre projects in the EU, the UK, Norway and Switzerland that are announced, in planning, permitted or under construction, one row per project or campus, 5 MW or more, or with no capacity published. | Projects under way every month, announced projects every quarter. | 11 Oct 2026 |
| Grid connection tracker | What grid operators, regulators and governments publish about new connections, market by market: capacity, queues and the rules that pause, ration or condition them. | Every rule and figure is re-read weekly; a market is rechecked in full every month where a rule sets its status, every quarter otherwise. | 12 Oct 2026 |
| Live European grid | Carbon intensity of electricity and day-ahead power prices by market, hour by hour, with the next 48 hours where they are published. | Refreshed every 10 minutes; a series that misses its refresh is marked as delayed. | 11 Oct 2026 |
| Market comparison | European markets side by side on power cost, grid carbon, cooling climate and the rules that apply. | Yearly and half-yearly figures; the date is the last rebuild. | 10 Oct 2026 |
| Siting cost and emissions | National electricity prices and grid carbon for every priced European country, the inputs of the siting ranking. | Yearly and half-yearly figures; the date is the last rebuild. | 11 Oct 2026 |
| Regulation tracker | EU and national energy rules for data centres, with their status, thresholds and next dates. | Revised when a rule moves; the date is the last revision. | 10 Oct 2026 |
| AI accelerator power | Rated power of AI boards, servers and racks, as their makers state it. | Ratings read from the makers; the date is the newest reading. | 10 Oct 2026 |
| Energy-infrastructure map | Power plants of 50 MW or more worldwide, with fuel, capacity and commissioning year. | A historical inventory; the date is the last rebuild. | 17 Sep 2026 |
Calculators that only do arithmetic on what you type, such as the fibre latency or EED indicator tools, say “ScienceShot calculation” instead. Their formulas are shown on the tool itself.
What gets in
- The pipeline follows data-centre projects of 5 MW or more, or with no capacity published, that have a public milestone since January 2024 and are not yet fully operating. A project whose status is publicly disputed waits until a primary record settles it.
- A row goes in only after we have opened the document behind it and found the figure there. A second reviewer then reopens the same document. If the figure isn’t on the page, the row stays out.
- Listings that only repeat other listings don’t count as evidence, and neither do rows we can’t trace to a first-hand publication.
- The grid connection tracker records what operators, regulators and governments publish. It never counts enquiries or rumours as capacity.
- We report facts about projects and markets. We don’t rate or rank operators, sites or individual buildings.
Basis rules
These rules apply on every page that shows our data.
- Capacities are never summed. Developers state megawatts on different bases: IT load, campus power, a grid connection. Adding them would mix the three, so we count projects and quote each capacity on its own stated basis.
- Every figure is dated. It carries the period it describes, the day we last checked it, or both.
- When nobody publishes a figure, we say so. The trackers print “not published” with the date we looked, and a blank cell is never filled with a number from somewhere else.
- Where two publications disagree, both figures are shown side by side. We don’t average them.
- Figures are never added across markets, units or kinds of capacity.
- Anything we derive is labelled a ScienceShot calculation, with the arithmetic shown beside the inputs.
How status labels are assigned
A label is set by a written rule, never by our judgement of how likely something is. Each pipeline project sits at the latest public milestone we found for it:
- Announced
- The developer has published a plan. No permit or construction start found.
- In planning
- Zoning, a permit application or a council process is under way.
- Permitted
- Planning permission, a resolution to grant, or a site permitted for data-centre use.
- Contractor appointed
- The main works contract is awarded; construction start not yet confirmed.
- Under construction
- Ground broken or preparatory works started.
- Structure complete
- The building is topped out and not yet in service.
A row that passes its recheck date without a fresh check is marked “Recheck pending” on the tracker automatically, so a late check is visible to you as well as to us.
Grid connection statuses come only from a named rule in force: a decision, policy or statement by an operator, regulator or authority. We print the operator’s own term next to ours, and we don’t call something a moratorium unless the rule does.
- Paused
- A rule in force stops new connection offers for data centres, large demand or all demand in an area.
- Rationed
- Offers continue under a published cap, quota or allocation round.
- Conditional
- Offers depend on published criteria, such as on-site generation, flexibility or location, or are non-firm only.
- Congested
- The operator publishes congestion or a waiting list for new demand, with no rule of the three kinds above.
- Published
- The operator publishes available capacity and none of the above applies.
- Not published
- We found nothing from the operator for that voltage level.
A rule that has been superseded or has expired never sets a status, and a rule covering only part of a market is shown without setting the status of the whole market. On the regulation tracker, “in force”, “adopted, not in force” and “proposed” follow the legal text itself.
Review before publication
Every release is reviewed independently before it goes out. That covers a new dataset, a tracker update, a market page and every article. The reviewer is someone who didn’t produce the work. They reopen the documents, recompute the figures from the underlying data and check each claim against what the document actually says.
Nothing is published until the reviewer approves it. A rejected draft goes back with the points to fix and is reviewed again from the start. We keep the record of each review with the release, including what was rejected and why.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we fix it on the page where it appeared, keep the address the same, and list the correction here with its date. Changes that alter no figure or finding, such as a typo or a layout fix, aren’t listed. If you spot an error, tell us and we’ll check it against the source.
Corrections log
800V DC power for 1 MW server racks
On the rack current chart, the 18,500 A label sat on top of the 20,000 A gridline and the axis title overlapped a tick label. We redrew the chart. The values didn’t change.
Regulation tracker and EnEfG hearing
We had described Germany’s waste-heat reuse requirement as a share that rises over time. The act sets the share by each site’s start-up date, 10% for sites starting from 1 July 2026 with 15% and 20% planned for 2027 and 2028, and gives two years to reach it. Both pages now say so and note that the bill to change the rules is not yet law. The hearing article’s page references to the act were also corrected.
We had said the Commission report’s average PUE of 1.36 came from a different data set. It matches the first reporting round, which the public dashboard labels 2023 and shows at 1.37. The page now pairs each figure with its reporting year.
Carbon intensity for the Netherlands reads too high around midday because Dutch solar output is under-reported upstream. The figure is now flagged at every hour. We also removed a note that wrongly treated Belgium’s zero nuclear output as a data error: two reactors were offline.
Google’s Finnish projects at Muhos and Kajaani now show that the authorities ordered site work suspended pending environmental assessments.
Regulation tracker and EU minimum performance standards
The identifier of the EU rating act and the wording on when it enters into force were corrected on both pages.
How to cite ScienceShot
Name ScienceShot, the page title, its address and the date shown on it. Market pages print a ready-made line, and so do the embed panels. For example:
ScienceShot, “European data-centre pipeline”, https://scienceshot.com/data-centre-pipeline/ (checked on the date the page shows).
Our compilations are © ScienceShot. You’re welcome to quote individual facts and figures with a link to the page they come from. The datasets themselves aren’t offered for download.
Contact
Questions about a figure, a correction or how to cite us go to the editorial team at science.shot.page@gmail.com. You can also use the contact page. We reply within two working days.