The plans for green industry and large investments in Lolland-Falster and South Zealand are based on one crucial condition. There must be enough electricity, and it must be deliverable. Right now, the electricity grid is the weakest link. The state company Energinet has paused new connection agreements to get an overview of the pressure on the transmission network, and the grid company Cerius has simultaneously put large connections on hold.
At the same time, a planned data centre and investments of up to 20 billion on North Falster depend on a promise of an electricity connection of up to 350 megawatts. This is happening in a region where investments worth billions in Power-to-X, biofuel, and green industry are already planned. Therefore, a new question arises. If the capacity of the electricity grid lags behind, does the region risk losing some of the investments that the green strategy is otherwise built around?
How the electricity grid works
The state company Energinet operates the main electricity grid in Denmark. This is where large amounts of electricity are transported around the country. Network companies like Cerius deliver the electricity the final stretch to businesses and households. When a company needs a lot of electricity, there must first be capacity in the main electricity grid. If there is not, the project cannot be connected, even if there are local cables.
In an op-ed in Børsen, Energinet's CEO Thomas Egebo writes that the expansion of the electricity grid cannot keep up with the development, even though construction work has been significantly increased. He also points out that with the current framework, it is not possible to keep up with demand, no matter how quickly construction is carried out.
Great pressure
Denmark is attracting large investments these years because it is among the best in the world at delivering green electricity. But Energinet cannot keep up. The demand to be connected to the electricity grid has grown much faster than the energy system is built to handle. Energinet has registered a total potential electricity consumption of around 60 gigawatts nationwide. In comparison, Denmark's current maximum electricity consumption is around 7 gigawatts. A large part of the demand comes from new types of energy consumption. Data centres, Power-to-X plants, battery parks, and other energy-intensive industries are taking up an increasingly larger part of the queue. This puts massive pressure on the transmission network, which in many areas is already close to the limit of how much electricity it can transport.
How should it be prioritised
From 1 February 2026, Energinet announced a new prioritisation model, where projects would no longer be processed on a first-come, first-served basis, but assessed based on, among other things, maturity and load on the electricity grid. A few weeks later, the situation was further tightened. New connection agreements were put on hold to get an overview of the demand and its consequences for the electricity grid.
The pause is now being used to clarify how the future prioritisation should look in practice. When it is lifted, it will be the model that determines which projects gain access to the electricity grid. This is a clarification that large parts of the industry are waiting for.
In South Zealand and Lolland-Falster, the development becomes particularly evident. Here, the municipalities are working purposefully to attract companies within green industry, data centres, and the production of green fuels. Several billion-class investments are already on the drawing board or underway. A Power-to-X plant near Nakskov, a large plant for the production of aviation fuel on Masnedø, and a planned data centre on Falster are among the ventures that can change the business structure and require access to large amounts of electricity.
Delayed expansion
The expansion of the electricity grid in the area is already under pressure. A central upgrade of the high-voltage grid on Lolland-Falster and South Zealand has become significantly more expensive and delayed by several years. Two important connections will not be completed until 2028 and 2029. They are intended to increase the capacity of the grid and make it possible both to send electricity from the many solar and wind plants further into the system and to connect new large electricity consumers. When the timeline shifts several years into the future, it becomes a crucial factor for the companies considering investing in the area.
For investors, access to electricity is therefore a crucial factor. This is especially true for the planned AI data centre on Falster, where the project requires an electricity connection of up to 350 megawatts. This is equivalent to almost seven times the current peak load of the entire Guldborgsund Municipality. Such projects require assurance that the electricity grid can deliver the capacity on time. If this assurance is lacking, investments may seek other areas where the infrastructure is already in place.
But the pressure on the electricity grid is not a local problem. It applies to large parts of Europe. Therefore, the alternatives are fewer than they might initially appear.
The expansion of the electricity grid is therefore no longer just a technical issue for the energy sector. It is becoming a crucial framework for business development. In recent years, Lolland, Guldborgsund, and Vordingborg have positioned themselves as a centre for green energy, new fuels, and energy-intensive industries. Investors have started to look towards the area, and investments worth billions of pounds are either planned or under development. They all have one thing in common. There must be space in the electricity grid. If the expansion of the infrastructure lags behind, it could become the factor that determines where the next wave of green investments ends up.
