Google has suspended its data centre campus project in Spain until the details of the upcoming Royal Decree are known. The decision affects an investment estimated in billions of dollars.
According to ecosistemastartup.com, Google has suspended its large technology campus project in Spain until the details of the upcoming Royal Decree are known. The pause affects the expansion of its computing capacity in the country and an investment estimated in billions of dollars.
The most affected project is the Sol submarine cable station, which would connect Santander with Florida over a plot of nearly 6,000 m² in Cantabria. Google currently operates in Madrid with servers hosted in third-party centres, and the anticipated growth is now frozen.
The draft requires data centres to cover 80% of their consumption with new renewable energy sources, and this percentage must be met hour by hour, not as an annual average. According to the cited analysis, the regulation would apply to facilities with a network access capacity equal to or greater than 1 MW.
The business association SpainDC, which groups more than 300 companies and of which Google is a member, warns that some projects would be much more expensive or outright unfeasible. Their claims also point to surcharges of between 300% and 500% on certain tolls and charges, which increase with repeated non-compliance and may be accompanied by the loss of access permission.
The president of SpainDC, Emilio Díaz, argues that the requirement is technically difficult:
«It makes no sense to demand new renewable generation when there are already hours when we are dumping renewable energy because the system cannot absorb it».
The business association therefore calls for first utilising the existing capacity before forcing the construction of more. The CNMC estimates that around 12 GW of access permits have already been granted, compared to a maximum of 4 GW for 2030 planned in the AI Strategy.
As a reference, Ismael Clemente, CEO of Merlin Properties, pointed out that the United States has about 63 GW of operational data centres, equivalent to 8% of national consumption, while Spain totals 400 MW, just 0.4% of consumption.
The sector estimates that the accumulated investment until 2030 could reach €66.9 billion, but SpainDC estimates that between 80% and 90% of the new investment that could choose Spain is at risk under the current proposal.
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