The Association of Spanish Cloud and Data Center Service Providers (APECDATA) has filed comments on the draft Royal Decree that will regulate the energy, environmental, resilience, and digital sovereignty requirements for data centers in Spain. Among other changes, the organization is proposing to raise the threshold for certain obligations from 1 MW to 5 MW and to replace the hour-by-hour renewable consumption requirement with a calculation based on annual equivalent hours.
APECDATA’s comments in 20 seconds
- APECDATA proposes raising the threshold for several obligations from 1 MW to 5 MW.
- It asks for energy and water requirements to be adapted to each facility.
- It rejects calculating the renewable percentage strictly hour by hour.
- The association backs the decree’s sustainability and digital sovereignty goals.
- It also calls for greater legal clarity and coordination with other regulations in progress.
The comments come after the public comment period opened by Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) closed on September 10, 2026. The government’s text aims to bring order to the rapid growth of infrastructure that has already accumulated more than 6 GW of granted access capacity on the transmission grid since late 2023, plus roughly another 6 GW on distribution grids since 2020.
APECDATA shares part of the government’s diagnosis, but believes some requirements could disproportionately hurt smaller Spanish operators and facilities that have a limited impact on the power system.
From 1 to 5 MW to avoid a one-size-fits-all rule
One of the main changes proposed by the association concerns the decree’s scope.
The draft generally sets the new obligations for data centers with a grid access capacity of 1 MW or higher. The government justifies the threshold on the grounds that, from that level upward, demand can have a noticeable impact on available electrical capacity and other resources.
APECDATA proposes raising it to 5 MW for certain obligations.
The association argues that applying the same framework to large campuses of tens or hundreds of megawatts and to much smaller centers can place a disproportionate burden on the latter.
That includes corporate facilities, shared spaces, and smaller-scale data centers that are part of the local cloud and hosting services fabric.
The distinction matters because the Spanish market isn’t made up solely of the large projects announced by multinationals. There are also regional providers, private corporate data centers, specialized operators, and companies running infrastructure on a much smaller scale.
According to APECDATA, these facilities have a limited impact on the goals the Royal Decree is pursuing and should therefore receive proportional treatment.
The government’s draft already differentiates some obligations. Those related to information and disclosure, for example, apply from 500 kW of IT power, in line with Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364. The general 1 MW threshold, however, refers to electrical grid access capacity.
| Aspect | Government draft | APECDATA’s proposal |
|---|---|---|
| General scope | From 1 MW of access | Raise certain obligations to 5 MW |
| Information and disclosure | From 500 kW IT | Not specifically challenged in the filing |
| Energy efficiency | Referenced to the European Class A | Adapted to each facility’s characteristics |
| Water efficiency | Referenced to the European Class A | Account for climate, water, and cooling |
| Renewables | 80% with hourly correlation | Calculation using annual equivalent hours |
| Digital sovereignty | Specific requirements | APECDATA asks to strengthen EU alignment |
APECDATA is not, therefore, calling for the regulation to be scrapped. Its position is that the requirements should be better tailored to the size and technical characteristics of each facility.
The hour-by-hour renewable requirement remains the main sticking point
Another contested aspect is the mechanism proposed to ensure that data center growth doesn’t increase fossil fuel consumption.
The government’s proposal requires certain centers to back at least 80% of their electricity consumption every hour with new renewable generation, as long as the renewable share of Spain’s grid remains below certain levels.
The requirement combines two elements: additionality and hourly correlation.
Additionality means the data center must be paired with new renewable capacity, rather than simply contracting electricity from already-existing plants.
Hourly correlation requires that renewable energy coincide in time with consumption.
It’s this second requirement that APECDATA wants to change.
The association proposes calculating the percentage of non-fossil energy using annual equivalent hours rather than hour by hour. Its argument is that sources such as solar don’t generate at night, and that imposing a strict match can make compliance difficult even for projects with a high level of renewable contracting across the year as a whole.
The technical problem is a familiar one.
A data center typically maintains a fairly stable demand around the clock, while solar and wind generation varies depending on the hour and weather conditions.
Meeting a high percentage in every time slot can require combining different generation technologies, storage, and power contracting.
The government defends precisely that requirement because it wants to avoid a facility drawing heavily on renewable generation during favorable hours while relying on gas whenever solar or wind output drops.
APECDATA believes the same goal can be pursued through a less restrictive annual system for operators.
There is still no final wording. The comment period has ended, and the government must now decide what changes to incorporate before moving the Royal Decree toward approval.
Climate and cooling type should count too
The association is also calling for changes to the energy and water efficiency criteria.
The draft aims to link Spain’s requirements to the future European data center labeling system planned under the development of the Energy Efficiency Directive.
Until that mechanism is fully available, the government has proposed demanding reference values for indicators such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which measures the ratio between the total energy a facility consumes and the energy used directly by IT equipment, and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), which relates to water consumption.
APECDATA is asking for Spanish regulation to be harmonized with the European framework and to take into account variables such as the climate zone, the site’s water situation, and the cooling system used.
Not all data centers operate under comparable conditions.
A facility cooled mainly with air in a given region can show different energy and water performance than another that uses evaporative systems or liquid cooling in a different climate.
Applying a single value without considering those conditions can, according to the association, produce comparisons that aren’t very representative.
The debate isn’t about whether water efficiency should be measured at all, but about how to set values that allow facilities with different technologies and locations to be compared fairly.
APECDATA does back greater digital sovereignty
The association’s comments aren’t limited to asking for fewer obligations.
APECDATA welcomes Spain’s intent to tie data center regulation to European digital sovereignty and proposes strengthening the connection with the future Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA).
Here, too, it’s worth distinguishing between an approved rule and a proposal still in progress.
The European Commission presented the Cloud and AI Development Act on June 3, 2026, aiming to boost Europe’s cloud and artificial intelligence capacity, speed up the rollout of sustainable data centers, and establish a common framework for assessing the sovereignty of cloud and AI services.
CADA is still going through the legislative process and shouldn’t, therefore, be treated as a fully applicable European regulation yet.
The Spanish draft includes several obligations related to this issue.
These include a requirement that the operator be established in the European Union and that certain operational data under its control remain within EU territory.
For public-sector information systems subject to Spain’s National Security Framework, the text goes further: data, metadata, telemetry, logs, replicas, and backups under government control should be processed and stored within the EU.
APECDATA considers it reasonable for stricter requirements to apply to companies that hold data belonging to citizens, businesses, and public administrations, and notes that privacy and European jurisdiction are part of the value local providers can offer.
The association is thus putting the focus on a different issue than power consumption: who physically controls the infrastructure and under which jurisdiction the data it hosts falls.
More clarity on penalties, and three regulations that will need to fit together
The organization is also asking for greater legal certainty in the text and clearer limits on its penalty regime.
According to its comments, it’s also necessary to coordinate the Royal Decree with two other regulations moving through the legislative process that affect the same sector.
The concern is to avoid different obligations approved in parallel creating overlaps or incompatible requirements.
APECDATA’s president, Roberto Beitia, sums up the association’s position, saying Spain needs a “balanced and technically sound” framework and that the rules shouldn’t penalize local operators or discourage investment.
The statement obviously reflects the sector’s own interests, but it captures one of the central debates around the draft.
The government wants to prevent the many connection requests for data centers from taking up grid capacity that new industries, households, transportation, and other electrification projects also need. Operators, for their part, fear that stricter conditions than those in other European countries could make building digital infrastructure in Spain less competitive.
The scale of the problem explains the regulatory urgency.
MITECO notes that already-granted access permits exceed even the most ambitious rollout forecasts considered for the coming years. Spain’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Strategy estimated around 2.5 GW of computing power by 2030, equivalent, according to the ministry, to roughly 3.5-4 GW of electricity demand.
Against that forecast, transmission and distribution operators have already jointly granted around 12 GW of access to data-center-related projects.
That gap doesn’t mean all of that capacity will actually get built. One of the goals of the regulation is precisely to separate firm projects from requests that could reserve capacity for years without ever being carried out.
APECDATA shares the need to bring order to that growth, but it now introduces another element into the discussion: regulation designed to control large international campuses shouldn’t end up imposing the same burdens on local operators already working in Spain with much smaller facilities.
The final version of the Royal Decree will have to decide where that balance sits between grid access, sustainability, digital sovereignty, and the sector’s competitiveness.
Sources:
- APECDATA, APECDATA calls for new data center regulation to protect the local ecosystem and strengthen digital sovereignty, September 14, 2026.
