Summary
- Digital Vault Sulcis has received Italy’s designation as a project of pre-eminent national strategic interest.
- The first phase targets about 30MW of AI-focused IT capacity, scaling towards 50–60MW and up to 100MW of total site power.
- Energy Vault targets construction from 2028 and commercial operation by 2030, subject to final approvals.
Energy Vault has set out the development timetable and capacity plan for its Digital Vault Sulcis project in Sardinia after the programme received Italy’s designation as being of pre-eminent national strategic interest.
The designation was approved by the Italian Council of Ministers in August, while Energy Vault disclosed further project details on 1 September. It creates an accelerated administrative route through the remaining authorisation process rather than constituting final construction approval.
The first phase is planned around an AI data centre of approximately 30MW at the former Carbosulcis coal-mining complex in Nuraxi Figus. Energy Vault says the wider master plan could expand towards 50MW to 60MW of IT capacity and as much as 100MW of total site power.
Power infrastructure built into the campus
The project combines the data centre with renewable generation, energy storage, and energy-management infrastructure rather than treating electrical supply as a separate utility connection.
That approach reflects the increasingly difficult relationship between large compute projects and grid availability. Across Europe, access to land is often less constraining than access to firm electrical capacity on a commercially useful timetable. Developers are consequently looking at storage, on-site generation, private networks, and hybrid energy systems as ways to increase resilience or reduce the amount of infrastructure required from the public grid.
Energy Vault has not yet published a final technical architecture for all stages of Digital Vault Sulcis. The company’s business spans battery, gravity, hydrogen, and software-controlled energy systems, but the mix deployed at the Sardinian data centre will be determined through the project’s remaining engineering and approval work.
The former mining location gives the scheme an industrial-redevelopment dimension. Carbosulcis and Energy Vault have been working on plans for the site as an energy and technology hub, with the data centre strategy now becoming a larger part of the programme.
The company said it has progressed land rights, engineering, grid interconnection work, commercial engagement, and project planning over the past year. It is targeting the start of construction by 2028 and commercial operation by 2030, subject to final approvals and other development milestones.
Those dates remain targets rather than fixed delivery commitments. Large AI infrastructure programmes can carry long lead times for grid equipment, transformers, switchgear, cooling plant, construction capacity, and computing hardware even after planning and political support have been secured.
Industrial policy meets digital sovereignty
The Italian designation places Digital Vault Sulcis within a broader policy drive to increase domestic digital capacity and attract high-technology investment. Energy Vault said the government has identified digital sovereignty and AI infrastructure as strategic objectives alongside the industrial redevelopment of the Sulcis region.
That provides political momentum, but the engineering proposition still has to demonstrate how much power can be delivered, at what level of resilience, and on what timetable. A 100MW site power figure also differs from IT load: part of the electrical envelope is required for cooling, electrical conversion, pumps, controls, and other facility systems.
The project is notable because Energy Vault is approaching the data centre market from the power side. Its existing business is centred on energy storage and grid infrastructure, and the Sardinian programme extends its build-own-operate model into powered digital infrastructure.
That convergence is becoming more common as electrical constraints influence which data centre projects reach construction. Energy companies, infrastructure funds, developers, and operators increasingly overlap around the same problem: securing enough reliable power to turn a data centre pipeline into operational compute.
National strategic status should reduce some administrative friction for Digital Vault Sulcis, but it does not remove the remaining delivery risks. Final approvals, technical design, power infrastructure, customer demand, and construction still stand between the policy designation and an operating 30MW first phase.
