NAVON WORLD AT BLUE BEACH: RETHINKING DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE IN A SOVEREIGN DIGITAL AGE

Navon World calls on European policymakers to rethink data center siting, placing renewable power sources ahead of legacy fiber corridors to secure digital sovereignty, cut energy loss, and ease hyperscaler dependence.

Navon World today unveiled a power-first vision for European data centers at the Blue Beach conference in Hamburg, arguing that national security now hinges on where and how compute is powered.

Speaker Erin Beilharz contrasted Europe’s crowded FLAP-D hubs with a U.S. trend of building data centers next to generation assets, showing how colocating with wind, solar, hydro, or nuclear sites slashes transmission losses, stabilizes energy pricing, and unlocks new regions for growth. She urged governments to audit unused industrial land near renewables, pair it with robust fiber or satellite backhaul, and even consider energy-rich partners such as Morocco, Algeria, or Kenya—provided their data laws align with GDPR. The goal: create privacy-aligned, sovereign compute zones that reduce over-reliance on hyperscalers subject to the U.S. Cloud Act.

“Europe can no longer treat data centers as passive tenants of the grid,” said Erin Beilharz, Head of Infrastructure Strategy at Navon World. “By anchoring them to clean power first, we turn compute into a strategic asset that delivers resilience, lowers emissions, and keeps our citizens’ data in jurisdictions we control.”

Navon World is exploring joint ventures and research pilots to validate power-first deployments and non-aligned cloud models across Europe and select global-south markets, with results to be shared later this year.

For media inquiries, contact: press@navonworld.com