IDA Calls on Rome to Purge Speculative Bids from Italy's 94 GW Data Centre Grid Queue
Italy's IDA says automatic expiry rules and clear deadlines are needed before phantom projects crowd out real data centre investment worth up to EUR 60bn.
Italy's grid connection queue has reached around 94 GW of pending data centre requests, a volume that dwarfs any realistic near-term buildout, and the sector's own lobby now says it must be cut back sharply. The Italian Data Center Association (IDA) called on Friday (2026-09-11) for tighter screening of applications, automatic expiry mechanisms and clear deadlines to remove speculative projects occupying capacity without credible development plans.5
IDA president Luca Beltramino said the fundamental problem was not how easy it was to submit a connection request, but the absence of any mechanism to automatically remove stalled or expired projects. That gap has allowed developers to hold virtual grid capacity with limited accountability, compressing the queue for operators with real construction timelines.5
Rome's energy ministry moved in late July (2026-07-23) to address the underlying permitting delays, unveiling plans to cut connection waiting times from more than three years to around 10 months, analysts told Montel. Faster permitting would reduce the barrier for serious developers. But it does not resolve the speculative holding problem IDA is now flagging. Speedier processing without an expiry mechanism risks drawing in more placeholder bids alongside genuine ones.4
The numbers behind the queue are not modest. Italy's data centre power demand is forecast to quadruple to 20 TWh by 2030, according to consultancy Key to Energy. Up to EUR 60bn of investment is targeting the Italian market as part of a broader EUR 100bn-plus European surge driven by artificial intelligence, Key to Energy partner Virginia Cana told Montel on Thursday (2026-05-21). Connection delays were already emerging as the dominant risk in northern Italy, she said.1
With that capital in play, queue congestion carries real consequences. Key to Energy warned on Thursday (2026-05-21) that persistent grid bottlenecks could redirect investment toward Spain and eastern Europe. A 94 GW backlog signals the opposite of reliable access, even when much of that total is speculative rather than bankable.1
Italy's renewable PPA market is already adjusting, with a 1.7 GW pipeline driven partly by data centre operators seeking to lock in their own power supply. The data centre sector itself had 343 MW under construction and a further 1.6 GW planned and awaiting permitting by May (2026-05-21), according to energy economics professor Pasquale Cavaliere, as reported by Montel.2
ENTSO-E has flagged a related continental constraint: if data centre load growth across Europe is not properly managed, transmission system operators may be forced to reduce renewable energy penetration across the grid. Italy, which already contends with congestion between its northern and southern bidding zones, sits near the front of where that pressure lands. Data centres are clustered in the north, where connection bottlenecks are already visible, and any meaningful wave of genuine connections would test that zone's balancing capacity.3,1
Beltramino's push for automatic expiry is not purely regulatory advocacy. Established operators with live projects have a direct commercial interest in flushing placeholder bids that consume queue positions. Whether Rome acts on both the fast-track permitting reform and the queue cleanup before Italy's next planning cycle decides how much of the EUR 60bn AI-driven investment wave the country retains — and how much flows to its European competitors.5,1,4