Spain has some of the basic conditions to become the European revelation of the data center business. The abundance of renewable energies, its strategic geographical location as a connection point with America and Africa, a powerful fiber network and the availability of land offer an opportunity for the development of large-scale facilities, with a hundred pieces of equipment that will be increasingly more necessary due to the emergence of AI.
According to a report by Aurora Energy Research, “the Iberian Peninsula currently registers an excess supply of electricity due to the high generation of renewable energy in relation to demand.” Therefore, it foresees that the arrival of data centers can help absorb this surplus and encourage investment in the sector.
With the growth of data centers, Aurora estimates that the contribution to the total electricity demand of the Iberian Peninsula will increase to reach 11% in 2060. Forecasts indicate a strong increase in demand for data centers, with consumption which will reach approximately 25 TWh in 2040, which represents a growth of 7% in total electricity demand. In Portugal, demand is expected to grow to 10 TWh in the same period.
McKinsey, for its part, assures that global demand for data center capacity could increase at an annual rate of between 19% and 22% from 2023 to 2030, reaching an annual demand of 171 to 219 GW. In a less probable, but possible scenario, demand would increase by 27% to reach 298 GW.
This strong growth would be part of a wave of investments that the funds are leading in the world and for which they already have more than 80,000 million ready to invest in the coming years, but the bottleneck in the Spanish case continues to be in the access to the network that has already caused at least two projects to throw in the towel due to access problems: one in San Fernando de Henares and another in Tres Cantos.
Colliers, which prepares one of the most prestigious reports in the sector, shows in its latest analysis until September of this year the map of progress in the development of data centers and highlights their current implementation. Madrid, Barcelona and Aragon are the three areas that currently lead the number of operational facilities and, at the same time, some of the areas in which there is greater interest in being implemented, as shown by the mapping prepared by the consulting firm.
Madrid leads the number of companies that are responsible for promoting these facilities.
Prime has plans to build a 40 MW center and already has land to do so in Alcobendas. Equinix has announced its development plan for its third building (MD4x) at its current Alcobendas campus. Quetta Data Centers, Azora and Core Capital’s company, intends to invest 500 million in six data centers, the first in Tres Cantos, with 7 MW under its Quetta Data Centers platform. Data4 has started the construction of the MAD2 campus, located in San Agustín de Guadalix, with a capacity of 12 MW each. In addition, it is finishing its current MAD1 campus (Alcobendas). Iridium, a subsidiary of ACS, has acquired a plot of land in Alcalá de Henares for its first 50 MW center. Nabiax aims to reach 22.3 MW. The new capacity that the company is developing is located in Alcalá de Henares (7.5 MW) and on Julián Camarillo street in Madrid (2.5 MW). Iron Mountain plans to install 10 MW and reach 79 MW in the next decade. Thor Equities has begun construction of the first phase of Form8tion’s Madrid One campus, which will offer up to 24 MW and will be operational by the end of 2024. The campus will have more than 100 MW.
Merlin Properties: A center with 3 MW currently in operation has been inaugurated at the end of 2023 and will reach 20 MW of capacity. In fact, yesterday it inaugurated another center in Álava that aspires to become the largest in the country with a power of 300 MW.
Regarding Barcelona, the Colliers report reveals the following investments: Atlas Edge bought land for the development of its second data center. The idea is to have 10 MW in 2027, with a potential to expand to 24 MW. Coreweave: An American company specialized in AI will invest $2.2 billion to expand in Europe and by the end of 2025 it plans to open three data centers on the continent, one of them in Barcelona.
Merlin Properties: Inaugurated its critical facility at the end of 2023 with 16 MW and is expected to reach a capacity of 22 MW once fully operational. In July 2023, Global Technical Realty announced the purchase of land in Cerdanyola del Vallés, with the potential to house a center with an electrical load capacity of up to 16 MW. AQ Compute will reach a power capacity of 35 MW in its installation. Panattoni announced in April 2023 that it will invest 300 million euros in the construction of what will be the second largest campus in Catalonia, with 30 MW secured for the first phase. Digital Realty: The first Digital Realty (BCN1) data center is located in Sant Adrià and is expected to be completed in these weeks. BCN1 is currently under construction and will reach a power of 15 MW. Adam is developing a second Data Center in Cerdanyola del Vallès. The installation of 5 MW of gross power for its first phase is expected to be operational in 2026. On the other hand, Aragón has placed itself on the map as one of the main focuses of large American companies.
The main hyperscalars continue to focus their AI expansion plans on the region thanks to the area’s capacity to provide access to large plots with electricity supply in the short/medium term, and it also produces around 13% of all renewable energy in Spain. excellent connectivity, and local administrations are granting facilities.
The installed capacity in operation is 108 MW, since the first phase has already been launched. AWS announced that it will develop its fourth in the El Reciclado Technology Park (Zaragoza), and a fifth installation in the Walqa Technology Park (Huesca). The American company plans to invest 15.7 billion until 2033. Microsoft announced its third Data Center in the region in Villamayor de Gállego (Zaragoza). This project is added to the other 2 Data Centers announced in the PTR and in La Muela. The three projects have been declared Projects of General Interest of Aragon (PIGA).6,6 QTS, a Blackstone company, announced in June the construction of a 300 MW data center in Calatorao, Zaragoza.
Box2bit, owned by Capital Energy, announced an investment of 1 billion in the first renewable self-consumption. The total capacity secured in the project is approximately 1,800 MW IT, subject to the completion of the Microsoft projects and AWS cloud regions and the beginning of operations in the QTS regions.
On the other hand, electricity companies such as Iberdrola, Solaria, Capital Energy are stepping on the accelerator in the sector. Thus, Iberdrola has announced the creation of its new company CPD4Green. The electric company’s intention, at least for the first installation, is to reach an exchange agreement for a 20% stake to facilitate the installation of the first 200 MW, which would mean an investment of nearly 2,000 million euros. In this way, the company could enter a rapidly growing business without having to make a significant capital outlay.
The first alliance could be closed for Bilbao in the first half of 2025 and the center could be operational in 2030. For this plant, the company would offer hydraulic energy as well as the installation of a photovoltaic plant.
The electricity company has a potential portfolio of 5 GW, of which 1 GW is in the advanced phase and more than 600 MW already secured in a model that they plan to extend to other countries.
In Castilla La Mancha: Solaria, together with the Japanese technology company Datasection, plans to develop a 200 MW Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center in Puertollano (Ciudad Real). Solaria ensures that it offers great added value to potential data center clients, since it has an energy portfolio of more than 3 GW in operation and under construction and a private electrical infrastructure that covers almost 1,000 km of networks, 97 substations and 70 plants. photovoltaic. This portfolio will continue to grow until reaching 14.3 GW in 2028, betting on geographical diversification and hybridization with wind energy and batteries. The Meta CC in Talavera de la Reina has been approved as a Project of Singular Interest by the regional Government, and construction works will begin in the first quarter of 2025.
The regional government plans to approve the declaration of regional interest for the project that Box2Bit will develop with the construction of 2 CCs in Torija and Recas, interconnected and planned for 2024 and 2025, respectively. Valencia: The main operators in the region are Nixval, Kio (developing its first CC in Spain that is expected to be operational in November 2024), NxN Data Centers and Walhalla. NxN announced in May 2024, the development of its first Data Center in southern Europe (Valencia).
In Galicia: Impulsa Galicia and Ingenostrum have partnered to create a 15 MW data center. through the company Galicia Green Data Center, with which it intends to invest 400 million euros.
The Bilbao-Navarra Axis: Bilbao benefits from one of the best connectivity infrastructures on the Iberian Peninsula with the arrival of four submarines. Merlin Properties has inaugurated its CPD located in the Arasur Industrial Estate (Álava) with 3 MW and a load capacity of 100 MW. The Atlantic Data Infrastructure (ADI) Data Center aims to reach 2 MW.
In Extremadura: Ingenostrum, promoter of the CC Green Data Center (220 MW) in Cáceres, plans to have it operational by mid-2027. 34 MW, plus an additional 9 MW IT for land development, have been requested and an additional 186 MW have been requested from REE
Generative AI will double electricity consumption in five years
Generative Artificial Intelligence plans to double the current energy consumption of data centers in the next five years. The conclusion follows from the prospective report by the consulting firm Deloitte to which ‘elEconomista.es’ has had access, where the professional firm estimates that the electricity bill for this type of installation could be around 1,065 terawatt-hours (TWh), which It would be equivalent to 4% of global energy consumption. In fact, Generative AI requires more intense energy consumption than other technologies. Technology companies, including cloud service providers, semiconductor manufacturers and data center operators, “have and will play a key role in developing actions to encourage energy efficiency and the adoption of renewable energy,” according to Deloitte . Some of the measures that are already being applied “are the use of more efficient chips, innovative cooling solutions, sustainable designs for materials and facilities, and carbon-free energy sources,” adds the consultancy. However, “although these measures are already mitigating current energy consumption derived from Generative AI, it is expected that it will take years for them to have a relevant impact on reducing energy consumption.”
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