Summary
- Proposed rules would apply to data centres above 1MW that are not yet connected to Spain’s electricity grid.
- At least 80% of electricity supply would have to come from renewable sources in every operating hour.
- Non-compliance could ultimately cost developers their right to connect to the grid.
The Spanish government is preparing a new regulatory regime for data centres that would link access to the electricity grid with renewable generation, water efficiency, cybersecurity and controls over where data is stored.
Government sources told Reuters that the draft decree is due to enter public consultation and would apply to facilities with more than 1MW of power capacity that have not yet connected to the grid. Projects already progressing through permitting would be given six months to comply or surrender their connection rights without sanction.
The energy provisions would go considerably further than a simple annual renewable-power purchasing requirement. Under the reported draft, renewable energy would have to cover at least 80% of a data centre’s electricity supply during every hour of operation.
Each new megawatt of electricity consumed would also have to be matched by a megawatt of renewable generation installed during the 18 months before the facility enters operation. Developers could meet that requirement through long-term contracts or locally installed generation.
Failure to comply could result in sanctions extending to the loss of grid-connection rights, according to the government sources. That would put energy compliance directly into the development pathway: a project unable to demonstrate the required supply structure could risk losing one of its most valuable infrastructure assets before construction is completed.
The proposed regime also reaches beyond energy. Operators would have to be established in the European Union, while data and metadata handled by covered facilities would have to remain within the EU. Mechanisms would be required to control access from third countries, with stricter provisions for sites handling public-sector or national-security data.
Water and energy performance requirements are expected to align with the highest efficiency level envisaged under the data centre sustainability labelling system being developed at EU level. The detail will depend on the final decree, but the direction would place infrastructure efficiency, digital sovereignty and cyber controls within the same permitting framework.
Spain has become one of Europe’s busiest prospective data centre markets as developers pursue sites with access to renewable generation, relatively large land parcels and links into expanding fibre infrastructure. AI infrastructure has accelerated that development pipeline, but the scale of proposed load has also made the quality of projects — and their demands on energy and water systems — a larger policy question.
The hourly renewable requirement is particularly material. Annual renewable procurement can allow periods of heavy grid consumption to be balanced against renewable production at other times. An hourly threshold instead requires the electricity sourcing strategy to follow the operating profile of a continuously loaded facility much more closely.
That can increase the importance of generation diversity, storage, flexible contracts and careful power-market structuring. A solar-heavy procurement strategy, for example, still has to address overnight demand, while periods of low wind production create a different balancing problem. Data centres provide comparatively steady loads, so matching that consumption hour by hour is more demanding than buying enough renewable output over a year.
The additional requirement to associate new consumption with recently commissioned renewable capacity would also push developers towards demonstrable additionality rather than relying entirely on existing generation and certificates.
The rules remain proposals rather than final law, and the consultation process could change their scope or thresholds. If adopted substantially as reported, however, Spain would make grid access conditional not simply on whether electricity capacity exists, but on how a new data centre plans to source that electricity, use water, secure its systems and govern the data inside the facility.
