Workload-flexible data centers reduce renewable curtailment in Europe’s net-zero energy system

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Information and communication technology (ICT) is becoming a system-scale driver of Europe's net-zero transition. Data centers concentrate electricity demand near cities while producing continuous cooling demand, and an increasing share of computing is deferrable in time. Yet most continental-scale energy-system studies still treat ICT demand as either exogenous or marginal, leaving its system-wide implications for net-zero planning insufficiently quantified. Here, using a Monte Carlo ICT-demand projection, country-level spatial disaggregation, and a continental EnergyScope-EU optimization framework, we quantify how these characteristics reshape near-optimal net-zero energy-system designs in Europe. Unlike prior studies, we represent data centers simultaneously as geographically concentrated electricity loads, sources of recoverable heat, and time-flexible demand within a continental multi-energy optimization framework. We find that data centers contribute ∼7.9% (667 TWh yr − ¹) of final European electricity demand in 2050 and provide up to 243 TWh yr − ¹ of recoverable thermal output from cooling with value concentrated in district-heating-ready urban areas. When a deferrable share of workloads is shifted toward wind- and solar-rich periods, the European curtailment rate declines from just over 9% (inflexible case) to ∼6.5% (fully flexible case), highlighting flexible computing as a measurable renewable-integration lever. These values reflect EU-wide totals, with system benefits concentrated in ICT-intensive load hubs (e.g., Germany, France, and Italy) for flexibility and in district-heating-ready countries for heat recovery. Explicitly representing data-center electricity, heat recovery, and workload flexibility are therefore necessary for credible decarbonization planning and for designing incentives that align digital infrastructure operation with system needs.