Amazon Web Services is encountering grid connection wait times of up to seven years for new European data center projects, a delay that exceeds the usual finance and physical construction timelines by quite some margin.

This is according to Amazon’s head of energy markets and regulation for AWS EMEA, Pamela McDougall, who, in an interview with Reuters, said that timelines for getting a grid connection have become one of the biggest deciding factors in Amazon’s data center investments. "And we're finding more and more across Europe that certainty of the delivery date has continued to be delayed," she said during the interview.