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.
