Up to 90% of investments in data centers at risk. In that percentage, Spain DC estimates the effect that the new regulatory framework being prepared by the Government of Spain could have on the sector, which would require that 80% of the energy of these centers come from renewables every hour.
The association has announced that it will submit objections to the Draft Royal Decree and demands more time to analyze it and a technical table with the sector. They believe that “the intensity and accumulation of some of the requirements foreseen, along with the proposed timeline for their implementation, may jeopardize investments already underway and hinder the viability of projects that are in advanced stages of development.”
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However, from SpainDC they assure that they share “the objectives of sustainability, efficiency, digital sovereignty, and orderly growth pursued by the Government, but they maintain that certain conditions of the Project may reduce Spain's ability to compete with other European markets when attracting new digital investments.”
If the Royal Decree is approved in its current terms, they emphasize, Spain would have the most restrictive regulatory framework in the European Union. This orientation, they add, contrasts with that of other community countries that, in their opinion, are trying to combine the objectives of sustainability and digital sovereignty with the capacity to attract new projects.
Concern for already initiated projects
One of the main reasons for concern for SpainDC is that the new requirements would also affect projects that began to be developed under the previous regulatory framework. Some of them may have accumulated years of work and already have investment commitments.
The president of the association, Emilio Díaz, points out that investment decisions in this sector are made over a very long term. When an Administration grants a permit for access and connection, he explains, a project may have already begun to commit land, financing, works, equipment, energy contracts, and agreements with third parties.
Therefore, SpainDC considers it especially problematic that the conditions of those investments could be structurally modified and that the projects have barely six months to adapt to the new scenario. Díaz warns that this combination poses a problem of legal certainty and proportionality.
The executive director of SpainDC, Begoña Villacís, agrees that ordering the growth of the sector should not translate into the exit of investments that Spain has already managed to attract. In her opinion, a regulation designed to reinforce digital sovereignty could end up producing the opposite effect if it causes investment, employment, and computing capacity to be located outside the country.
Projects that other markets are already evaluating
The association assures that the risk of loss of investment is not merely a hypothesis. According to SpainDC, there are projects and investment plans that are already starting to evaluate location alternatives in other European markets due to the possibility that Spain adopts a more rigid, less predictable framework that is difficult to reconcile with the actual timelines required for the development of these infrastructures.
Villacís points out that the demand for artificial intelligence, cloud services, and other digital services will continue to exist, even if the necessary infrastructures to provide them are not built in Spain. In that case, she adds, data centers would be built in other markets and those facilities would be the ones providing digital services to Spanish companies and citizens.
The latest Annual Report of SpainDC estimated the accumulated direct and indirect investment that could occur between 2026 and 2030 in a continuity scenario at 66.9 billion euros.
That same report calculated that, in a restrictive scenario, investment could be reduced by 36%. SpainDC now indicates that those forecasts may have even been underestimated given the content of the new regulatory project.
The previous estimate already contemplated a negative trend marked by network restrictions, greater regulatory difficulties, delays, and the displacement of projects to other markets. However, according to the association, that calculation did not incorporate a regulatory framework of the intensity that the Draft Royal Decree now proposes nor the accumulation of requirements it contains.
The requirements that concern the sector
SpainDC does share the need to combat speculation and to free up electrical capacity linked to data center projects that do not have a real expectation of execution. The association, however, believes that to do so, criteria related to the maturity of the projects, the investment already committed, the effective progress of the initiatives, and the compliance with milestones should be used.
The objective would be to differentiate a speculative capacity reserve from a project that has real development and concrete commitments.
In addition to this issue, they identify other areas of the Draft Royal Decree that generate concern. Among them are the combination of additionality and renewable correlation requirements, energy and water efficiency demands, contractual rigidity, and the surcharge regime.