Italian Utility A2A Unveils €1.6 Billion Data Center Strategy, Starting in Lombardy
December 5, 2025
In a significant move that underscores the convergence of energy and digital infrastructure, Italian utility giant A2A has announced its entry into the data center market. The company, Italy's third-largest utility and the dominant player in the northern Lombardy region, plans to invest approximately €1.6 billion ($1.86 billion) over the next decade to develop and manage new data centers, marking a strategic pivot to become both a power producer and a digital infrastructure developer.
The company's first project will be located in Lombardy, with construction slated to commence in 2027 and operations expected to begin the following year. While specific details on capacity and exact location for this inaugural facility remain undisclosed, A2A's CEO Renato Mazzoncini confirmed the utility is actively working on three separate data center projects across the region. This announcement aligns with a broader surge in data center development in Milan, Lombardy's capital, where capacity is projected to increase tenfold, adding around 2 gigawatts (GW) over the next five years from a current base of approximately 200 megawatts (MW).
Mazzoncini highlighted the strategic rationale behind the move, stating the investment is part of the company's broader €23 billion capital expenditure plan through 2035. "We aim to deploy 3.7GW of new wind and solar power by 2035 while also managing a significant portion of grid capacity," he noted, linking the data center initiative directly to the utility's core energy transition goals. The entry of a major utility like A2A, which already manages around 9GW of installed power generation capacity, is seen as a natural evolution to capture the soaring electricity demand from digital infrastructure, particularly from artificial intelligence workloads.
The Lombardy market has become a focal point for European data center expansion. Earlier this year, a joint venture between energy company Eni and Khazna Data Centers announced plans for a massive 500MW AI data center campus in the region. A2A's foray signals a deepening trend of traditional energy players leveraging their grid expertise, land assets, and renewable energy portfolios to secure a competitive edge in the rapidly growing and power-intensive data center sector.
Source: datacenterdynamics
Italian Utility A2A Unveils €1.6 Billion Data Center Strategy, Starting in Lombardy
