ITALY Trends and Developments Contributed by: Maria Cristina Breida, Giuseppe Bovenzi, Valerio Vinci and Sonia Marlazzi, EY Società tra Avvocati
drawing of drinking water, surface water intended for irrigation and water from rivers and lakes protected under EU and national law; a preference for brownfield sites over greenfield development. Significantly from a climate perspective, the law also requires project proponents to submit an energy report covering renewable energy solutions, energy performance indicators based on best available tech - nology, and a feasibility study for waste heat recovery through district heating. The law translates those priorities into a system of incentives and disincentives that steers, rather than commands, towards climate-neutral design choices. Operators that respect one or more of the energy and environmental priorities qualify for a set of procedural and economic benefits, which may be combined (Arti - cle 3): accelerated timelines for environmental com - patibility assessments; simplified authorisation pro - tocols; priority access to regional funding for digital innovation, industrial transition and urban regenera - tion; a reduction of up to 30% in construction lev - ies; and a reduction of up to 75% in the minimum car-parking area required under the municipal urban plan. Conversely, operators that site a data centre on agricultural land, rather than on brownfield or disused areas, are subject to a 100% surcharge on the stand - ard construction levy, rising to 200% where the site falls within a regionally protected natural area, with the proceeds directed to ecological and environmen - tal compensation measures (Article 5, par. 4). For large projects with a required connection capacity exceeding 10 MW, the law also imposes a mandatory inter-municipal compatibility assessment, conducted through a consultative services conference, aimed at evaluating territorial, environmental, infrastructural and social externalities and agreeing compensatory measures (Article 5, par. 7). A particularly telling example of the law’s approach is its provision on cooling water (Article 2, paragraph 1, letter d). Rather than merely monitoring water con - sumption (as the Delegated Regulation requires at European level, which includes the intake of drinking water for data centre operations among the energy and sustainability indicators to be reported to the European database), the Lombardy law makes the
exclusion of drinking water and irrigation water from cooling systems a condition for accessing the proce - dural incentives, effectively transforming a European monitoring indicator into a design requirement. This approach also reflects a sensitivity already expressed at European level by the European Water Resilience Strategy, which expressly references the need to limit water requirements for the digital transformation, with particular attention to data centres. Whether other Italian regions – and the national leg - islature – will follow Lombardy’s lead remains one of the more consequential open questions in Italian data centre regulation. Conclusions and considerations The Italian and European regulatory framework gov - erning data centres is in rapid transition. Data cen - tres are no longer regulated only as pieces of digital or real estate infrastructure, but they are increasingly being treated as climate and resource-relevant assets whose growth is to be conditionally permitted rather than merely monitored. The regulatory question is no longer merely how much energy data centres con - sume, but under what conditions digital infrastructure can continue to expand: conditions tied to low-car - bon and renewable energy procurement, waste-heat recovery, measurable energy efficiency, water-resilient cooling, brownfield-first siting and compatibility with grid capacity and territorial externalities. The trajectory of the EU legal framework is moving from transparency and reporting obligations towards comparability and minimum performance standards rooted in the objective of climate-neutrality; national and regional regimes are beginning to translate those objectives into permitting criteria, planning choices and incentive mechanisms calibrated around resource resilience. Focusing on Italy, the legal framework remains partly transitional. Recent measures have improved proce - dural co-ordination and integrated data centres more closely into the energy system, but the substantive environmental and climate conditions applicable to projects are still emerging through environmental assessment practice, administrative guidance and regional experimentation. In that respect, Lombardy
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