Summary
- Two programmes in Lombardy and Piedmont carry approximately €8 billion of proposed direct investment.
- Equinix plans seven facilities near Milan, while the Cavour campus would reuse a former power station at Trino.
- Extraordinary commissioners can coordinate approvals, but grid delivery, procurement, and site-level consents remain unresolved.
Italy’s Council of Ministers has granted national strategic status to two data centre programmes worth approximately €8 billion, bringing proposed campuses in Lombardy and Piedmont under an accelerated coordination process led by extraordinary commissioners.
The first programme, led by Equinix, covers seven data centres proposed for Settimo Milanese and Cusago. The facilities would support carrier-neutral colocation and hyperscale deployments, including infrastructure intended for AI workloads, through an investment programme valued at about €4 billion.
A second €4 billion programme would redevelop the former Galileo Ferraris power station at Trino into the Cavour Hyperscale Campus. Its proposed capacity of between 300MW and 400MW would place it among Europe’s larger announced data centre developments.
National status strengthens administrative coordination
The government approved both designations under Article 13 of Italy’s Asset Decree. Extraordinary commissioners, appointed in agreement with the relevant regional authorities, are expected to coordinate public bodies and support the delivery of unified approvals.
Administrative priority does not replace the engineering, planning, and environmental work required at each site. Equinix’s seven-facility programme must still comply with Lombardy’s regional framework for data centres, municipal planning instruments, grid requirements, and the conditions attached to individual construction and environmental permits.
The government says the Equinix programme will run between 2026 and 2033 and will use electricity covered by a renewable-energy agreement already signed by the operator. The structure, duration, source, and physical delivery arrangements of that procurement have not been disclosed, leaving a distinction between contractual renewable matching and the infrastructure needed to energise the facilities.
Construction across seven buildings could employ about 1,500 people, according to the government, while more than 500 direct and indirect roles are forecast once the programme is operating. The final workforce will depend on the development sequence and the balance between retail colocation, wholesale deployments, and highly automated hyperscale halls.
The government decision provides the investment scope, project locations, and indicative schedules.
A retired power station becomes a 400MW proposition
The Cavour development would reuse an industrial site with a long history inside Italy’s electricity system. Former power stations can offer extensive land, transmission infrastructure, access roads, water systems, and an established planning context for heavy engineering, although those advantages do not make a hyperscale conversion automatic.
Generation connections are designed to export electricity, whereas a data centre imports large and comparatively steady loads. Protection systems, network flows, transformer arrangements, and the condition of existing equipment must all be reassessed. Some infrastructure may be reusable, while other elements require complete replacement.
The government expects the conference of services for Cavour to begin before the end of 2026, followed by unified authorisation by the end of 2027 and a first operational phase before the end of 2028. A campus ultimately reaching 300MW–400MW would almost certainly be delivered in stages, with separate electrical and data hall blocks commissioned as grid capacity and customer demand become available.
At full scale, the project would require a substantial programme of high-voltage switchgear, transformers, standby power, cooling systems, controls, security, and fibre. Procurement schedules for transformers, generators, and other critical electrical equipment have lengthened across Europe as hyperscale and grid investment compete for the same manufacturing capacity.
Construction employment at Cavour is forecast to average about 1,200 people and exceed 2,000 at peak, with 300–350 skilled positions at steady state and around 1,000 roles in the wider supply chain. Those estimates reflect the scale of the build programme, although permanent data centre employment remains far lower than the workforce required during construction.
Italy’s combination of industrial land, energy infrastructure, and growing interconnection has attracted developers looking beyond the established Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin markets. Milan already supports a developed colocation ecosystem, while sites in Piedmont offer the physical space required for larger campuses.
Central government is now attempting to convert that interest into deliverable capacity through strategic designations and a unified national permitting process. Faster coordination can reduce duplicated reviews and administrative drift, but it cannot remove municipal planning conformity, grid reinforcement, environmental assessment, or local opposition.
The two programmes will also place pressure on Italy’s engineering and construction supply chain. Seven buildings around Milan and a 300MW–400MW campus at Trino would require specialist MEP contractors, commissioning teams, controls engineers, and critical systems suppliers at the same time as competing developments advance elsewhere in Europe.
National strategic status creates a more direct route through the public administration. Site-level permits, contracted power, long-lead equipment orders, and initial construction packages will establish whether the €8 billion programme can move at the pace envisaged by the government.
