Summary
- Facilities requesting more than 5MW will be treated as productive uses, while projects above 10MW face wider territorial assessment.
- Brownfield land, grid proximity, efficient cooling, renewable procurement, and technically viable heat recovery receive explicit planning preference.
- Municipal mapping and regional monitoring will expose the cumulative effects of concentrated development on electricity, water, land, and local infrastructure.
Lombardy has enacted Italy’s first regional law dedicated to the construction, expansion, and monitoring of data centres, placing electricity demand, water use, land consumption, heat recovery, and local infrastructure capacity inside a single planning framework.
Regional Law 11 of 3 June 2026 classifies facilities requesting more than 5MW of connection capacity as productive uses, while developments above 10MW are considered significant beyond the boundaries of their host municipality. Projects exceeding 50MW, crossing provincial borders, or requiring regional environmental authorisation will be coordinated directly by the regional government.
The legislation arrives as Milan and the surrounding region absorb a growing pipeline of hyperscale, colocation, and AI infrastructure. Individual municipal decisions have become increasingly difficult to separate from cumulative grid demand, water pressure, land availability, noise, and the concentration of backup generation across neighbouring sites.
Preferred locations include disused industrial areas, contaminated land, exhausted quarries and mines, underused property, and other sites identified for regeneration. Proximity to existing electricity infrastructure is written into the siting priorities, allowing authorities to consider the physical impact of new grid connections alongside the suitability of the land itself.
Power and cooling move into the application
Developers using the regional approval route must submit an energy report showing how much renewable generation can be installed within the site, how the remaining renewable power will be procured, and what energy and environmental performance the completed facility is expected to achieve. Where waste heat recovery forms part of the proposal, the submission must include a technical and economic feasibility assessment for district heating.
The cooling provisions are unusually direct. Preferred systems should avoid drawing water from public drinking supplies, protected rivers and lakes, groundwater reserved for potable use, or surface water allocated to irrigation. The law instead encourages efficient cooling technology, internal grey water recycling, non potable supplies, and the return of used water to compatible environmental or irrigation systems.
Those requirements do not impose one prescribed cooling architecture, and the appropriate design will vary between air cooling, direct expansion, chilled water, evaporative systems, and direct liquid cooling. They do require developers to explain where the water comes from, how much is required, and whether the site remains viable under local water constraints.
Heat recovery is treated with similar discipline. Captured thermal energy may be directed towards district heating networks, public or collective users, renewable energy communities, or industrial processes, although each proposal will still depend on a nearby offtaker, suitable temperatures, pipework, pumping energy, and a commercial agreement lasting long enough to justify the infrastructure.
Facilities supported by emergency generators must declare their indicative aggregate thermal capacity during the planning process. That creates an earlier view of fuel storage, air emissions, testing regimes, and cumulative backup generation in areas where several campuses may be developed within a relatively small radius.
Clearer rules bring a wider test
A regional data centre office will manage the unified authorisation process where Lombardy is responsible for integrated environmental permitting. A technical group involving the region, environmental agency ARPA, health authorities, provinces, the Metropolitan City of Milan, and municipal representatives will develop common administrative guidance.
Municipalities have 365 days from the law taking effect to map disused, contaminated, degraded, unused, and underused land, together with existing data centres and proposed expansion areas. The resulting geospatial information will be published through regional and provincial portals and updated when material changes occur.
A permanent steering group will monitor electricity demand, water abstraction, land consumption, noise, heat island effects, and the adequacy of infrastructure in areas with high concentrations of capacity. Transmission and distribution network operators can also be asked to provide mapping of available electricity capacity and potential development locations.
Developers following the stated priorities may receive shorter compatibility procedures, simplified protocols, access to selected regional funding, and reductions in certain construction contributions. Parking requirements can also be reduced, reflecting the relatively low level of daily vehicle demand once a facility is operational.
Greenfield schemes face the opposite treatment. Construction contributions are doubled where a project consumes agricultural land outside the preferred categories and can rise further in protected areas, with the additional money directed towards environmental, energy, and urban regeneration measures.
The framework provides a clearer legal identity for data centres, but it does not convert unsuitable land into deliverable capacity. A site will still need a credible grid connection, procurement programme, water strategy, planning consent, environmental approval, and customers prepared to support the capital required for construction.
Secondary measures from the regional executive will define technical criteria, performance thresholds, incentives, and procedural detail. Those decisions will determine how quickly developers can use the new route and how consistently municipalities interpret requirements covering power, water, heat reuse, and phased delivery.
Lombardy has moved data centre planning beyond an isolated building decision. Future applications will be tested against the infrastructure available around them and against the combined effect of capacity already operating or waiting to connect across the Milan region.
