Data centres: potential investment in Italy totalling 37 billion euros
The Ida association is calling for clear national rules to turn projects into building sites. Milan is leading the way, with Rome following suit; 80 per cent of the land is in areas that are already urbanised or brownfield sites.
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A potential 37 billion euros, demand driven by artificial intelligence, and one obstacle that operators highlight above all else: certainty regarding the rules. For Italian data centres, the challenge lies in their ability to turn announcements into operational infrastructure. The 2026 market research report by Ida, the association of builders and operators, presented at the Data Centre Symposium in Rome, estimates the potential cumulative infrastructure investment between 2026 and 2036 at around 37 billion. This estimate is linked to the full implementation of approved projects, with forecasts depending on available energy, network connections, authorisations, expertise and suitable sites.
The starting point is an installed capacity of around 760 megawatts by the end of 2025: 460 in the commercial sector and 300 in business centres. For the commercial market, the trajectory points to 2–2.3 gigawatts by 2031.
However, when analysing the project portfolio, it is important to distinguish between the different stages: of the 1,839 MW that have been approved, 230 are under construction, 673 are in development and 936 are at the preliminary stage. More than half of the identified future capacity is therefore still at an early stage of development. The megawatts recorded therefore represent an industrial opportunity, not a definite timetable for commissioning. Growth also depends on the ability to coordinate electricity grids and project development.
This is where the call from Ida’s president, Luca Beltramino, comes in: ‘The obstacles are primarily regulatory in nature. In our view – and in Ida’s view – it would be very beneficial if, at national level, we had very clear legislation on data centres, which would provide certainty regarding national rules and cover the whole country.’ The regions have already begun to enact legislation. The association believes a national framework is needed, within which regional regulations can address the details relating to local needs.
The Government has recognised the strategic importance of the sector. The Minister for Enterprise and ‘Made in Italy’, Adolfo Urso, emphasises: ‘Over 7 billion euros have already been invested, and a further 25 billion have been announced for the coming years’. These figures, cited by the minister, differ from the ten-year projections in the research. Urso also puts forward Palermo as the location for the European agency for the safety of submarine cables in the Mediterranean: “We hope that Palermo will be the chosen location.” For the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, the issue of data centres “is a matter of digital centrality, but it also means equipping ourselves with infrastructure that will lead to strategic investments in the digital sector”.
