Data Centers in Lombardy: 20 Projects Spark Revolt in Pavese
More than twenty data center projects are underway between Pavese and Milanese, and just as many citizen committees are ready to appeal to stop them. Italy's rush towards data processing centers for artificial intelligence clashes with rice fields, irrigation channels, and an already strained electrical grid, as detailed in an investigation published by Avvenire.
Terna has received over 400 connection requests across Italy, more than half concentrated in Lombardy. Among the hottest cases is the Apto project in Lacchiarella, temporarily blocked by the Ciarlasco Committee led by Enrico Duranti, who discovered the project was missing from the municipal pretorian register and forced the Ministry of the Environment to reopen the environmental impact assessment. According to committee calculations, the site would consume around 300 megawatts per day, an annual demand comparable to that of 700,000 families, nearly 2 million people.
Diesel Generators and Seveso Risk
The most technical aspect concerns the diesel emergency generators planned to ensure continuity in case of blackouts: with storage exceeding 4,000 liters of fuel, the facility would fall under the Seveso III Directive on establishments at risk of major accidents, a constraint the committee considers an irreparable flaw in the permitting process. At full capacity, the generators could burn up to 700 liters of diesel per hour, impacting air quality in an area already critical regarding atmospheric pollution.
On the thermal front, a study by physicist Sergio Manera, cited in the report, estimates an increase in temperature of up to 5 degrees within a two-kilometer radius around a large data center, a heat island effect that compounds the consumption of virgin agricultural land. Protests are also aimed at the Certosa di Pavia, where a project covering 130,000 square meters adjacent to the famous abbey has already gathered over 500 signatures demanding a halt to the urban planning variant that would authorize the data center, along with a Strategic Environmental Assessment (VAS); the petition, which started on Change.org, has exceeded 400-500 endorsements in support of the request.
Mayors on the Front Lines
In Borgarello, a municipality adjacent to Certosa, Mayor Alberta Samuele leads the opposition to the project: "We don't need warehouses; instead, we should focus on culture, tourism, and environmental enhancement," she explains, recalling the site's proximity to a nursing home and a frequently visited green area. The municipality had already blocked a shopping center a decade ago and now fears an eyesore just a few hundred meters from homes, this time falling under the jurisdiction of the neighboring municipality.
This is not an isolated case: in Sant'Alessio with Vialone, citizen and opposition pressure has already halted a project in the 'Campo dei Pomi', while in Zibido San Giacomo, Mayor Sonia Belloli has slowed down the multinational K2's establishment in an agricultural area and has also requested additional environmental impact assessments. The province of Pavia, in fact, ranks second only to Milan for requests for new facilities according to Terna's data, with almost twenty municipalities involved and multinational companies in line to apply.
Delayed Regional Law
Lombardy was the first region in Italy to legislate this issue when it encouraged establishment in disused production areas and doubled the urban planning charges for interventions on green spaces, but the law does not yet provide for a minimum distance from homes, a gap that Mayor Samuele defines as urgent to fill. The phenomenon has reached such proportions that it is being described as the revolt of the "Lombard Silicon Valley", but are we sure that certain infrastructures, which in some aspects would modernize the country and bring it closer to certain foreign nations, should be viewed so negatively?