Strategic Data Centers: 7 Programs, 25 Billion

July 24, 2026: the Council of Ministers declares two data center investment programs to be of paramount national strategic interest, worth €8 billion. August 4, 2026, twelve days later: two more, worth €6.8 billion.

That brings the total number of programs through this procedure to seven, worth over €25 billion. It is the most solid figure available today on Italy's data center pipeline — more solid than press announcements, because every line went through a formal decision.

1. The seven programs

The four from the last two sittings, in detail:

• Equinix per l'Italia — seven new data centers in Settimo Milanese and Cusago, €4 billion across 2026-2033, around 1,500 construction workers and over 500 permanent jobs. Colocation, connectivity and hyperscale capacity for AI workloads, with power declared entirely from renewable sources.
• Cavour Hyperscale Campus — conversion of the former "Galileo Ferraris" power plant in Trino, province of Vercelli. 300-400 MW, service conference by end of 2026, authorization expected by end of 2027, operation by end of 2028.
• K2 Strategic Infrastructure — Zibido San Giacomo and Lacchiarella, Milan metropolitan area. €5.3 billion, around 400 MW, four years of construction averaging 2,000 workers a year.
• Digital Vault Sulcis — the former Monte Sinni coal mine at Nuraxi Figus, municipality of Gonnesa, South Sardinia. €1.49 billion for a roughly 30 MW Edge AI data center, with an estimated impact of 400 jobs a year, direct and indirect.

2. How the lane works

The legal basis is not Law 49/2026, and the point is worth clarifying because it causes confusion: it is Article 13 of the "Asset Decree". The mechanism is triggered on a proposal from the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy for investment programs above €1 billion, and produces a precise effect: the Council of Ministers' decision opens the way to appointing, for each program, an extraordinary government commissioner in agreement with the Regions, tasked with coordinating administrations and accelerating implementation, including for the purpose of issuing the single authorization.

It is not a shortcut around the procedure: it is a commissioner sitting on top of it. The Art. 8 single procedure stays what it is — ten months, the Region above 50 MW thermal, MASE above 300 — but it gains a party whose only job is enforcing the clock.

What follows is a de facto three-tier hierarchy that any developer should have clear before deciding where and how to file a project:

1. Below €1 billion: the ordinary Art. 8 single procedure, or the SEZ single authorization in Southern Italy below environmental thresholds
2. Above €1 billion: Art. 13 of the Asset Decree, with a commissioner
3. Ahead: the Data Center Framework Act, approved by the Chamber on February 24, 2026 and still awaiting the Senate, which would reclassify data centers as national strategic infrastructure with dedicated ATECO codes, zoning rules, incentives for disused industrial areas and priority criteria for grid connection

3. The geography, and the first interesting data point

Three of the four programs from the last two sittings are in Lombardy and Piedmont. The fourth — Digital Vault Sulcis — is Southern Italy's first strategic data center, and it is the one that interests us most, for two reasons that have nothing to do with local pride.

The first: it is a brownfield, and not an ordinary one. A decommissioned coal mine becoming computing infrastructure is the story of the energy transition in a single frame — in the very Sulcis basin, and with the very workforce, for which industrial conversion has been an open question for thirty years.

The second: Sardinia sits inside the ZES Unica. The program therefore stacks the Art. 13 commissioner lane with the SEZ perimeter and the three-year tax credit we wrote about. It is the first empirical test of the regulatory crossroads we mapped in June: when the two regimes overlap, they do not cancel out — they add up.

One matter of scale would be dishonest to hide: 30 MW in Sardinia against 400 MW at the gates of Milan. Southern Italy entered the list through the edge door, not the hyperscale one.

4. What we take away

There is one element the press releases do not line up, and which jumps out when you read the two decisions together. K2 is building in Zibido San Giacomo and Lacchiarella: the same farming municipality south of Milan where, a few weeks earlier, hundreds of people had taken to the streets against a data center project. The commissioner lane accelerates administrative procedures. It does not accelerate consent, which runs on its own clock and does not answer to commissioners.

That is the real reason locating in Southern Italy is a competitive advantage rather than a fallback: available land, former industrial sites to convert, surplus renewable energy, and communities that look for industrial work instead of pushing it away.

Seven programs, twenty-five billion, one single project south of Rome. The next list will tell us whether 2026 was the year the South entered the pipeline or the year it watched the train go by.

Note: figures on individual programs are taken from official releases of the Italian Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.