Data centres, the country's digital transformation goes from here
The growth of digitisation, the use of the cloud and artificial intelligence applications is generating unprecedented demand for computing capacity and data management. According to Teha's elaboration of World Bank and Statista data, at a global level in 2024 more than 67% of the population will use the Internet, an increase of more than 50 percentage points compared to 2005. In Italy too, data traffic, IoT devices and demand for cloud services are expected to grow at a sustained rate over the long term, with annual rates even in double figures, based on the analysis of the Data Centre Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano. In this context, data centres are not simply technological infrastructures, but become an enabling factor for economic competitiveness and digital sovereignty.
According to the Politecnico di Milano, in 2024 there will be 168 data centres in Italy, for a total installed capacity of 513 MW, up 17% compared to the previous year, with a strong concentration in Lombardy and the Milan metropolitan area, which alone absorbs almost half of the national capacity. The scenarios to 2035 according to Teha, however, indicate a much higher possible need: power could exceed 2.3 GW in the trend scenario and reach up to 4.6 GW in a full potential one, signalling a growing gap between demand and infrastructure supply.
What is a data centre and how does it work
A data centre is a physical infrastructure that hosts servers, storage systems and networks, ensuring the business continuity of essential digital services - from electronic payments to digital government, from healthcare to ecommerce platforms - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Unlike on-premise data centres, traditionally managed by individual enterprises, next-generation facilities enable economies of scale, greater reliability and higher levels of security, making advanced computing capabilities accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises as well.
Large data centres, particularly hyperscale ones, rely on high standards of redundancy, energy efficiency and integration with telecommunications and electrical transmission networks. Italy, thanks to its geographical position and the presence of submarine cables, interchange nodes, fibre networks and high voltage connections, presents favourable characteristics for a distributed development of these infrastructures throughout the country.
Sustainability and environmental impact
The energy issue is central. According to Teha's elaboration of IEA and Bloomberg NEF data, global electricity consumption from data centres could quadruple by 2035, to around 4 per cent of global consumption, compared to just over 1 per cent in 2024. This makes the adoption of efficiency models and integration with the energy system crucial.
The same think tank's analysis shows that data centre efficiency - through the improvement of the energy efficiency indicator (PUE), the use of renewable sources, heat recovery and the reuse of brownfield sites - can generate significant environmental benefits. In a scenario of full application of these levers, up to 5.7 million tonnes of CO₂ could be avoided and contribute significantly to the reduction of emissions from the residential sector. In this perspective, data centres can be transformed from large energy consumers into active players in the energy transition.
Regulations as a lever to attract investment
The development of the sector depends crucially on the regulatory framework. The national strategy for attracting industrial investment in data centres emphasises the importance of clear authorisation processes, definite timeframes and planning that favours the use of brownfield areas (those already urbanised but now abandoned, underused or disused), while at the same time protecting the land and the environment. In the absence of stable and homogeneous rules, the risk is that new projects will be slowed down and investment opportunities will be lost to other European markets.
At the same time as authorisations, a factor that is often decisive is regulatory certainty in the broadest sense: the predictability of rules (and their application) at the administrative level, but also at the fiscal and, when relevant, penal level. For capital-intensive multi-year investments, the availability of a clear and consistent framework reduces the perceived country risk, increases the bankability of projects and makes it easier to allocate new investments in the territory.
It is also an issue of comparative competitiveness: countries that manage to combine certain authorisation times and stable rules attract hyperscale projects and the allied industries along the supply chain (energy, construction, components, ICT services) more quickly. In this logic, the Spanish experience is often cited as a benchmark of attractiveness: AWS in Spain has announced an investment plan of up to EUR 15.7 billion for its cloud region, with a long-term horizon and widespread effects on the local economy, foreseeing investments between 2024 and 2033, with an estimated 17,500 jobs per year (FTE) sustained in local companies, and an estimated contribution to GDP of EUR 21.6 billion over the same period (more than half, EUR 12.9 billion, in Aragon alone).
A 'system' feedback also comes from The European House - Ambrosetti/TEHA research 'Investing in the Mediterranean: dynamics in Italy and Spain', which compares the ability of the two countries to attract investment and points out how regulatory predictability (timing, rules and enforcement) is one of the enabling conditions for transforming infrastructure potential into construction sites and installed capacity.
The role of the AWS offering
In this scenario, large cloud operators play a key role in transforming physical infrastructures into concrete digital services for businesses and public administrations, by pooling infrastructure investments, technological expertise and operating standards that are difficult to replicate on an enterprise scale. Amazon Web Services fits into this context as one of the leading global cloud players, offering a wide range of services that provide access to computing capacity, storage, data management and artificial intelligence applications in a flexible, scalable and secure manner, reducing the need for organisations to incur direct investment in on-premise infrastructure.
AWS's strategy is based on a distributed infrastructure presence, organised into independent regions and availability zones, designed to ensure high levels of operational resilience and service continuity. This model allows enterprises and public administrations to develop critical applications with stringent requirements in terms of reliability, data security and low latency, while benefiting from economies of scale and continuous technology upgrades.
A central element of the AWS approach concerns the design and management of data centres, developed according to criteria of energy efficiency, optimisation of cooling systems and reduction of environmental impact, in line with the best practices highlighted by industry studies. The focus on the efficient use of energy, integration with renewable sources and reduction of PUE is accompanied by the choice of locations and construction solutions designed to integrate with the territory and existing infrastructures.
In Italy, this model translates into long-term investments aimed at strengthening the national digital ecosystem, supporting the growth of demand for cloud services by businesses, innovation in public administration and the development of new skills along the technology chain. In this sense, AWS's offer is not limited to providing IT services, but contributes to creating the infrastructural and technological conditions to accompany the digital transformation of the production system and foster the country's competitiveness in the European context.
Because these choices require long horizons, the combination of modern infrastructure and the certainty of the regulatory framework becomes the enabling condition for accelerating new investments: an environment with clear rules and predictable application not only reduces risk, but increases the likelihood that investments will expand over time, bringing additional capacity, skills and greater digital resilience to the country.
