Data centres: EU gives the green light to the Eni-Khazna joint venture. Lombardy hub set to accelerate
A 500-megawatt project in Ferrera Erbognone. A new contract for Ets from Equans Italia in Cornaredo. In Italia, programmes designated as strategic exceed 25 billion
The European Commission has given the green light to the joint venture between Eni and Khazna Data Centre Holdings. The Italian energy company is thus entering into a partnership with the United Arab Emirates-based operator specialising in hyperscale facilities – very large facilities designed for cloud services and artificial intelligence. Brussels considers that the transaction “would not raise competition concerns, given the limited combined market positions of the companies resulting from the proposed transaction”.
The agreement between the two companies dates back to July 2025, and the partnership aims to achieve up to one gigawatt of IT capacity (the maximum electrical power allocated to IT equipment) in Italia. An AI Data Centre Campus with a total IT capacity of 500 MW is currently being designed in Ferrera Erbognone, in Lombardy.
The facilities will be designed for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence workloads, which require large amounts of electrical power and high-capacity cooling systems. The project will be modular, allowing for a gradual increase in installed capacity. Khazna will contribute its expertise in the design and management of large data centres, whilst Eni will provide the energy infrastructure.
The electricity is expected to come from a new, high-efficiency natural gas-fired power station, which is designed to capture the CO₂ produced and transport it to the storage facility in Ravenna.
At the end of July, Eni announced that it was opening up its supercomputing facilities to businesses, start-ups and research centres, making computational capacity, specialist expertise and advanced tools available to the market for the development of artificial intelligence solutions and digital innovation, emphasising that this initiative was part of the growing strategic importance of digital infrastructure, which is increasingly central to industrial competitiveness and data sovereignty
