The agreement will see seven new-build solar projects used to power Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres in Italy. The projects are located in Northern Italy, close to Equinix’s data centres in Milan and Genoa.
This is the first PPA signed between Neoen and Equinix in Italy. However, the companies have collaborated on five other PPAs in Europe over the past three years, with contracted capacity now totaling 210MW.
This PPA brings Neoen’s total contracted capacity under corporate PPAs worldwide to over 2.8GW and Equinix’s global contracted to around 1.2GW.
Equinix has thus far executed 24 PPAs across Australia, Singapore, India, France, Iberia, Italy, the Nordics and the US. Once operational, these projects will generate more than 3,200,000MWh of clean energy.
Andrea Massimo Bartolini, Neoen Italy’s director and head of Business Development, said: “We are very pleased to sign our first PPA in Italy, less than 36 months after our establishment in the country and less than 10 months after launching the construction of our first assets in the country…We are very proud to play our part in building a more competitive and sovereign Italy”.
Marco Matarazzo, director of IBX Operations, Italy at Equinix commented: “The backing of the development of seven new solar projects in the country contributes to Italy’s decarbonisation targets and aligns with our goal of achieving 100% renewable energy coverage globally by 2030 as well as our commitments to driving positive change and advancing sustainability in the data center industry as a whole”.
According to McKinsey & Company, demand for data centres in Europe is expected to grow to approximately 35GW by 2030, up from 10GW today. At this rate, Europe’s data centre power consumption is expected to almost triple from about 62TWh today to more than 150TWh by the end of the decade.
Data centres are increasingly partnering with energy providers to secure a greener electricity supply when their own renewable energy sources can’t meet demand. McKinsey & Company suggest that, so far, PPAs are the leading strategy for hyperscalers (a player that offers large-scale cloud computing services with the ability to rapidly scale up or down) to fulfill their renewable energy commitments.
