February 06, 2026

Top news (3)

• Virginians lobby for statewide data center reform in Richmond: A 50+ organization coalition is pushing the Virginia General Assembly to advance multiple “data center reform” bills (oversight, transparency, ratepayer protections, and tax incentive reform).
• Minnesota calls for tighter utility planning and tariffs for new data center load: Fresh Energy urges the Public Utilities Commission to require better load forecasting, targeted rate design, and transparency as 1,120 MW of new data center capacity is planned in the state.
• UK Environment Agency permits Amazon’s Linmere Island Data Centre: An environmental permit under the Industrial Emissions Directive was issued to Amazon Data Services UK Limited for the Linmere Island site in Charlton (permit reference EPR/AP3427SQ/A001).

Key deals & projects

United Kingdom

• Environment Agency permit for Linmere Island Data Centre
  • Counterparty: Amazon Data Services UK Limited.
  • Regulatory milestone: Environmental permit issued under the Industrial Emissions Directive; permit/decision documents published 5 Feb 2026.
  • Implication for investors/operators: Permitting progress reduces development friction, but also signals tightening scrutiny on emissions/permitting compliance for large facilities.

Power, grid, interconnection & utility commercial terms

United States — Minnesota

• Policies urged to ensure data centers support clean energy
  • Scale: Fresh Energy references 1,120 MW of planned new data center capacity in Minnesota.
  • What is being pushed: Better load forecasting, targeted rate design, and transparency so incremental system costs are allocated appropriately.
  • Tariff context: The group supports Xcel Energy’s large-load tariff (filed July 2025) and other utility tariff actions aimed at ensuring large loads pay incremental costs.
  • Policy backdrop: Minnesota’s 100% clean electricity by 2040 law heightens focus on how incremental load is planned and paid for.

Policy & regulation (planning, environmental, systemic risk)

United States — Virginia

• Lobby Day for statewide data center reform bills
  • Event: Coalition Lobby Day on Feb. 9, 2026 in Richmond.
  • Bills cited: HB155/SB619, HB284/SB371, HB507, HB496, HB589/SB553, HB658/SB339, HB897/SB465.
  • Priorities: State oversight, transparency, ratepayer protections, and tax incentive reform.
  • Resource constraint signal: Coalition cites projections that data centers could use 33% of the Potomac Basin’s water (as cited from ICPRB), reinforcing that water and community impacts remain central to entitlement risk.

Europe — financial-system resilience and cloud concentration

• Europe’s digital autonomy and resilience (DNB/AFM view)
  • Core message: Systemic risk from concentration of critical services on a few hyperscalers.
  • Near-term recommendations: Scenario rehearsals, encryption key retention, multi-vendor strategies.
  • Regulatory context: DORA noted as being in force since January 2025.
  • Longer-term idea: Coordinated testing and potentially a cross-sector European cloud supervisor.

United Kingdom — macro context relevant to build-out

• Bank of England Agents report: UK economy weak, pay easing
  • Notes pockets of growth in renewables, infrastructure and industrial/data-centre projects.
  • Labour cost read-through: Agents’ pay survey expects average 2026 pay settlements of 3.4% vs 4.0% in 2025, potentially easing one input-pressure vector for construction/operations.

Digital infrastructure services, platforms & vendor moves

Europe/Canada cloud migration economics (VMware licensing response)

• OVHcloud launches Public VCF as-a-Service migration offering
  • Driver: Broadcom/VMware move to per-core licensing.
  • Offer details: Automated migration stack, 9–12 month price freeze, and planned BYOL license portability.
  • Hosting footprint mentioned: Datacenter hosting in Europe and Canada.

Enterprise infrastructure managed services

• Dell Managed Services accelerate AI, storage, compute modernization
  • Dell is promoting modular, pre-defined options across servers, storage, networking, data protection, and workloads including AI services.
  • Investor relevance: Signals continued vendor push toward “packaged” consumption models that can shape customer demand profiles (and therefore colocation/cloud capacity planning).

Sustainability, ESG & operating footprint signals

• maincubes awarded EcoVadis Silver Medal

  • Awarded 5 Feb 2026; positioned in top 15% of companies assessed.
  • Coverage referenced: Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam data centers.

• DataBank earns Great Place To Work Certification

  • Reported 95% employee approval.
  • Footprint highlighted: 65+ “HPC-ready” data centers across 25+ markets and 20 interconnection hubs.

• Nordic model offers sustainable blueprint for AI data centers

  • Argues Nordics’ advantages include abundant renewables, cooler climate, and waste-heat reuse.
  • Examples cited: Stockholm Data Parks and atNorth’s DEN01 heat integration.

R&D / networks (early-stage)

• Quantum-based resilient routing minimizing latency under dual-link failures
  • Proposes a QAOA-based method for two vertex-disjoint shortest Layer 3 paths to improve resilience vs dual-link failures; validated on a small toy topology on simulators and quantum hardware.

Summary (2 lines)

Regulatory and utility scrutiny is rising in major US growth markets, with policy attention focused on transparency, cost allocation, and resource impacts. In Europe, resilience and compliance themes continue to shape both regulation and cloud platform migration strategies.