Data Centres: Green Technologies for the Cathedrals of the Digital Age

A total investment of €2.5 billion for the construction of 14 new data centres, each with a capacity of 50 megawatts. Italy’s response to the global data centre boom comes with the plan recently approved by the Technical Commission for Environmental Impact Assessment of the Ministry for the Environment and Energy Security, which has given a favourable opinion on the construction of these strategic infrastructures.

The projects are being promoted by the main cloud infrastructure providers, from American big tech companies such as AWS and Microsoft to European players like Data4 and Equinix, as well as Italian operators such as Aruba and Tim. Their development will, for now, be concentrated mainly in Lombardy, where 13 of the 14 planned data centres will be built, while the last one will rise within the Tecnopolo Tiburtino in Lazio.

The new ministerial guidelines have introduced strict criteria for data center locations and construction, identifying areas to be renewed, far from residential zones, powered by renewable energy plants and designed to minimise acoustic and environmental impact. This model aims to make technological innovation compatible with environmental protection.

Italy’s plan is part of a global trend that increasingly sees data centres as the beating heart of the digital society.

In 2023, the sector generated a turnover of 325.9 billion dollars, set to reach almost 440 billion by 2028. According to Data Center Map (the international platform monitoring all active data centres worldwide), there are currently 8,311 facilities across 159 countries, with a strong concentration in the United States (3,059), followed by Germany (405), the United Kingdom (376), and Italy (153).

The world’s largest ecosystem is in Ashburn, Virginia, nicknamed “The Centre of the Internet”. Here, where around 70% of global traffic passes through, more than 260 data centres operate, with a total installed capacity exceeding one gigawatt.

Despite these figures, growth is set to remain steep in the coming years. McKinsey estimates that demand for data centre capacity will increase by between 19% and 22% per year until 2030, while Moody’s predicts a doubling of global capacity by 2028, driven by the explosion of Artificial Intelligence.

Each new generation of algorithms requires ever greater computing power and energy consumption — so much so that, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a single query on ChatGPT has ten times the energy consumption of a traditional Google search.

It is precisely the AI’s hunger for energy that is redefining industrial and environmental sustainability strategies in the data centre sector.

In the United States, the “Stargate” project announced in 2025 by President Donald Trump foresees 500 billion dollars of investment over four years to build ten new data centres dedicated to the development of supercomputing and artificial intelligence networks, with the participation of OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and the Emirati fund MGX.

This global race is also directly impacting the construction industry, creating the need to conceive new data center architectures, sustainable practices, innovative cooling solutions, and ever-closer integration with renewable energy systems and water infrastructures.

In this scenario, data centres become essential infrastructures on a par with bridges, railways, and dams — physical spaces that ensure the resilience of the digital economy and the security of data.

As in the rest of the world, investment in new data centres is set to increase in Italy. According to the Cloud Transformation Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, between 2022 and 2023 the funds allocated to data centres grew by 10%, a rate higher than in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

However, to sustain this growth, new network and energy production infrastructure will be required: ultra-high-speed connections, direct current (HVDC) transmission systems, renewable energy plants, and low-impact cooling technologies.

This is a transformation that brings together the world of civil engineering and that of technological and sustainable innovation.

In this context, the Webuild Group is today among the international players involved in the data center construction.

Through its subsidiary CSC Costruzioni, the Group has completed the GEN02 project in Gland, near Geneva, one of Switzerland’s most advanced technological hubs. The complex, developed for Stack Infrastructure, represents a model of energy sustainability and green technologies. Part of a network of interconnected data centres across Europe, it integrates advanced air-conditioning solutions, anti-seismic systems and high energy efficiency modules.

These activities demonstrate how the engineering expertise developed in major infrastructure works — from bridges to tunnels, from dams to energy plants — can now be applied to the new digital frontier.