Summary
- The European Commission has approved the Khazna-Eni joint venture under the EU Merger Regulation.
- The partnership centres on a planned 500MW IT campus at Ferrera Erbognone in Lombardy.
- Eni's proposed dedicated generation and carbon-capture model ties the project's buildability closely to energy infrastructure.
The European Commission has approved the creation of a joint venture between Khazna Data Centers and Italian energy group Eni, removing a competition-control step from plans to develop large-scale AI data centre infrastructure in Italy.
The Commission cleared the transaction under the EU Merger Regulation, concluding that the proposed venture would not raise competition concerns. The decision advances a partnership that Khazna and Eni have been developing since 2025 rather than announcing a new campus from scratch.
The companies’ central project is a proposed 500MW IT campus at Ferrera Erbognone in Lombardy, near Milan and at the site of Eni’s existing Green Data Centre. The project forms part of a wider Italy-UAE strategy that has contemplated up to 1GW of IT capacity across Italy.
Khazna and Eni signed heads of terms for the 500MW project in July 2025. Eni has said the campus would be developed in two phases and supported by dedicated power generation, giving the project an energy strategy that sits unusually close to the data centre ownership structure.
The proposed generation model relies initially on natural gas, with carbon dioxide intended to be captured and stored through the Ravenna carbon capture and storage hub. Eni has described this as “blue power”. The carbon and energy performance of that model will ultimately depend on the operation of the generation and capture infrastructure rather than the label attached to it.
The merger clearance does not itself resolve the engineering, permitting, power-generation, network, or construction work needed to deliver hundreds of megawatts of IT load. It does, however, move the corporate structure behind the development through another formal regulatory stage.
Power strategy embedded in the project
Large Italian data centre projects are increasingly being shaped around the same problem visible across other European markets: how to secure enough electricity on a timetable that matches customer demand.
For Khazna, partnering with a major energy company offers a different route from relying solely on a conventional grid connection and third-party power procurement. Eni controls energy assets, engineering capability, and the Ferrera Erbognone industrial location, while Khazna brings hyperscale data centre development and operational expertise.
That combination does not remove energy risk. It changes its form. A conventional data centre development is exposed to grid connection capacity and reinforcement schedules; a project using dedicated generation must also deal with generation efficiency, fuel supply, emissions, carbon capture performance, plant availability, and integration between the electrical and IT systems.
At 500MW of IT capacity, the electrical infrastructure behind the campus would be substantial even before allowing for cooling and other facility loads. Delivering it in phases provides a more manageable construction sequence, but each stage will still need sufficient generation, electrical distribution, backup systems, cooling capacity, and network connectivity before servers can be installed.
Italy has become a more active European data centre market as hyperscale and AI infrastructure pushes beyond the traditional Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin concentration. Milan is the country’s principal cluster, while power availability and industrial sites are encouraging developers to look at locations capable of supporting larger campuses.
The Khazna-Eni model is particularly relevant because the project is not separating the question of compute capacity from the question of energy supply. Those two systems are being developed as parts of the same infrastructure programme.
The Commission’s decision therefore clears only one layer of risk. The next substantive milestones will be physical: finalising the joint venture, advancing permitting and detailed engineering, completing the dedicated energy strategy, and committing capital to the first phase.
If those stages progress, Ferrera Erbognone could become one of Italy’s largest individual data centre developments. The difference between its stated 500MW ambition and operating capacity will be determined less by merger control than by whether the power, cooling, construction, and carbon-management systems can be delivered together at the required scale.
