In December 2025 we published an article on this blog titled "Apulia Data Center Valley: the ITH Vision". It was, avowedly, a thesis: Apulia has the physical characteristics to become the Mediterranean's computing hub.
Eight months later, that thesis has numbers. Some better than we had written. One worse.
1. The figure that matters: 7.7 GW
Based on connection requests filed with Terna, Apulia is today Southern Italy's leading region and fourth in the country for investor interest in the sector, with applications totalling roughly 7.7 GW.
The distribution is concentrated:
- 19 projects in metropolitan Bari
- 5 projects in the Brindisi area
For scale: 7.7 GW is more than half the peak demand of a country like Portugal, and around eight times the combined capacity of the four programs declared strategic by the Council of Ministers in July and August. These are requests, not facilities — we will come back to that distinction — but they are requests filed with a grid operator by parties who pay to file them.
2. The projects on the table
National and local press have described a package of initiatives of decidedly non-provincial size:
| Project | Capacity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Adriatic DC Bari | ~200 MW | conversion of the former Manifattura Tabacchi |
| Adriatic DC Brindisi | ~500 MW | second hyperscale hub in an industrial area |
| Adriatic DC Hub | ~1.5 GW | campus across roughly 800 hectares |
The first construction sites are expected by the end of 2026. For the Bari project alone the estimated initial investment is around €2 billion.
Worth noting what the first two entries have in common: they are brownfield. A decommissioned tobacco factory and an already-compromised industrial area. That is the difference separating Apulia from south of Milan, where projects are landing on farmland and meeting organized committees.
3. The number to handle with tongs
One figure circulates insistently: €100 billion of data center investment "announced or in development" in Apulia.
Let us be blunt, because a territory's credibility is also built by refusing its own inflated numbers: that figure is a sum of announcements — not of decisions, not of contracts, not of permits. It includes projects at preliminary study stage, land options, expressions of interest. Adding them up and presenting the total as a pipeline is methodologically indefensible.
The comparison that matters is a different and less flattering one: programs that have gone through the national strategic interest declaration under Art. 13 of the Asset Decree number seven, worth over €25 billion. In Apulia, zero.
Apulia leads the connection-request table and is absent from the decisions table. That is precisely the distance separating interest from investment, and closing it is the work of the next eighteen months.
4. Why the geography keeps backing the thesis
The fundamentals we listed in December have not changed, and have strengthened since:
- Surplus energy. The region produces more renewable power than it consumes, and in some hours generation is curtailed for lack of local load. A data center is the load that is missing.
- Less saturated grid. While Lombardy concentrates some 20 GW of requests on already dense nodes, Apulian nodes have genuine headroom.
- Subsea cables. Mediterranean landings and the new regional hub coordinated by Italy shift the centre of gravity of connectivity southward.
- ZES Unica. A three-year 2026-2028 tax credit and the SEZ single authorization, stackable with the national framework.
- Disused industrial areas. Available, serviced, often already connected, and with communities that seek industrial work.
5. The five conditions for this to come true
None of the following is a given, and anyone claiming otherwise is not helping Apulia:
- Grid capacity verified node by node. With the transparency imposed on Terna by DL 21/2026, those 7.7 GW of requests will have to be measured against real capacity: a substantial share will not be built, and that is normal.
- Consent built beforehand, not explained afterwards. The Lacchiarella lesson applies in Bari too. Brownfield helps, but is not enough.
- Water. Cooling in a Mediterranean climate is a serious technical problem: closed-loop, air-cooled or adsorption systems are not an engineering detail, they are the social licence to operate.
- Skills. A campus of hundreds of MW requires roles the region does not currently have in sufficient numbers. Without training pipelines started early, the qualified jobs arrive from elsewhere and the local benefit halves.
- At least one above-€1-billion program reaching the Council of Ministers. That is the signal turning a request ranking into a pipeline.
6. Where we stand
The Apulia Tech Hub project is not the largest on this list, and is not trying to be. Our thesis is that value for the territory is measured not in installed megawatts but in three things: how much otherwise-curtailed energy is absorbed, how much waste heat is reused, and how many skills stay in the region when the construction site closes. Those are the three indicators on which, as a Benefit Corporation, we accept being measured.
In December we were writing a vision. Today Apulia is fourth in Italy for connection requests and first in the South, with zero projects declared strategic. 2027 will tell which half of that sentence weighs more.
Note: figures on announced projects come from press sources and operator communications; connection requests are not equivalent to authorized or built facilities.