The Spanish government has closed the public comment period on the draft Royal Decree that aims to regulate new data centers in Spain with requirements covering energy sustainability, water consumption, resilience, and digital sovereignty. The proposal mainly affects facilities with 1 MW or more of grid access capacity and has triggered a strong reaction from the industry, which particularly objects to the requirement to back 80% of electricity consumption with new renewable generation on an hourly-matched basis. Raquel Figueruelo, head of Marketing, Business Development, and Institutional Relations at Alto Infrastructure, argues that the proposed conditions would put Spain among the most restrictive markets in the European Union for this kind of infrastructure.
Spain’s data center regulation in 20 seconds
- The comment period ended on September 10, 2026, after the initial deadline was extended.
- The draft mainly targets data centers with 1 MW or more of grid access capacity.
- It proposes backing 80% of consumption with new renewable generation on an hourly-matched basis.
- Operators and investors are questioning the impact of the requirements on new projects.
- The government defends the regulation as a way to protect the grid, electricity prices, and digital sovereignty.
This isn’t a finalized rule yet. The text is still in the legislative process and can change after the public comments. In fact, the government has already signaled it’s open to revising some requirements as long as it can still meet its goal of preventing the growth of these facilities from driving up electricity costs for other consumers.
The debate is also happening at a moment of strong demand for grid capacity. According to Spain’s Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), since late 2023 the transmission grid operator has granted data centers more than 6 GW of access capacity, on top of roughly another 6 GW granted on distribution networks since 2020.
At the same time, the government itself acknowledges that data centers are necessary infrastructure for digitalization and that Spain has favorable conditions for attracting them. The disagreement, then, is over how to manage that growth and what obligations new projects should have to meet.
The 80% hourly-matched renewable requirement draws most of the criticism
One of the most contentious points is the energy requirement.
The draft sets additionality and hourly-matching requirements for renewable energy. The government wants data centers to back 80% of their consumption with new renewable generation during every hour they operate.
The difference from contracting renewable electricity on an annual basis is significant.
A data center runs 24 hours a day. A solar installation, for example, concentrates its output during certain hours of the day. A company can consume and produce equivalent amounts of renewable energy over the course of a year and still need electricity from other sources during many of those hours.
Hourly matching is specifically meant to close that gap.
The government argues that data center demand is essentially flat, and that very rapid growth without new generation and enough firm capacity to match it could increase gas use during certain hours and push up electricity market prices.
The industry questions whether the proposed conditions are the right way to solve that problem.
Raquel Figueruelo has explained on LinkedIn that Alto Infrastructure submitted comments after analyzing the proposal and comparing it with other European regulatory frameworks. In her assessment, the proposed conditions would place Spain among the EU countries with the strictest rules for data centers.
Figueruelo also rejects the argument that restricting this infrastructure is necessary to keep electricity prices in check. In her post, she argues that Spain is already wasting renewable generation, noting that more clean energy was curtailed in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2024.
Her reasoning is that the problem isn’t the availability of renewable generation, but the ability to integrate and make use of it.
This is the position put forward by the executive, and it doesn’t by itself invalidate the government’s argument. Curtailed renewable output at certain hours can coexist with lower renewable generation at other times. That’s precisely why hourly matching has become one of the central points of the technical debate.
Starting at 1 MW, with additional obligations from 500 kW of IT load
The draft uses grid access capacity, rather than installed IT capacity alone, to define its main scope.
The general obligations will apply to data centers with 1 MW or more of grid access capacity. When several facilities under the same ownership sit at the same location, the draft treats them as a single unit.
There are also disclosure and reporting obligations starting at 500 kW of information technology (IT) capacity, in line with the scope set by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364.
| Area | What the draft Royal Decree proposes |
|---|---|
| Main scope | Data centers from 1 MW of grid access capacity |
| Disclosure and reporting | From 500 kW of IT capacity |
| Renewable electricity | 80% with additionality and hourly matching |
| Water | Efficiency and monitoring requirements |
| Energy | Efficiency and consumption indicators |
| Operational data | Must stay within EU territory under the proposed conditions |
| Operator | Must be established in the European Union |
| Third countries | Control and traceability of certain access and support |
| Electricity grid | Compliance tied to access and connection permits |
The draft thus introduces another dimension that goes well beyond electricity consumption: digital sovereignty.
Before bringing a facility into operation, the operator will have to submit a self-declaration confirming compliance with the established requirements.
Among the proposed conditions is a requirement that the entity be established in the European Union and that operational data under its control remain within EU territory.
The draft also includes traceability measures for support provided from third countries, oversight of direct subcontractors, and responses to access or data-transfer requests from foreign authorities that are incompatible with applicable law.
That doesn’t mean the draft would generally require all data stored by every customer of a facility to stay in Spain. The text limits these obligations to elements under the direct or contractual control of the obligated entity and specifically refers to certain operational data within the EU.
The industry fears losing investment to other European countries
The criticism isn’t coming only from Alto Infrastructure.
Various operators, investors, and associations submitted comments during the process — cloudnews.tech previously reported on the industry’s early rejection of the draft decree while the comment period was still open. According to information published after the deadline closed, the government received more than a hundred submissions.
Spain DC has warned that the proposed framework could affect part of the roughly €67 billion in investment the industry expects for Spain between 2026 and 2030. The association has gone as far as putting up to 36% of that investment at risk if the text is kept in its originally proposed form.
These are the industry’s own estimates, not projects whose cancellation has been confirmed.
The debate also can’t be reduced to a choice between building data centers or protecting the electricity grid. The scarce resource the government is trying to manage is precisely access capacity.
MITECO compares the permits granted with deployment forecasts. Spain’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Strategy projected around 2.5 GW of computing capacity by 2030, equivalent, according to the Ministry, to between 3.5 and 4 GW of electricity demand.
By comparison, the access capacity already granted on transmission and distribution networks adds up to far larger figures, although a grant of access capacity doesn’t necessarily mean the project will actually get built.
The government wants to use the new criteria to distinguish projects it considers solid and compatible with its energy goals from others that might reserve capacity without ever materializing.
Alto Infrastructure makes the case for data centers’ local impact
Figueruelo raises another argument in her public comments: territorial impact.
Alto Infrastructure’s executive rejects the assumption that social opposition should be taken for granted, and argues that this type of facility can generate economic activity in less populated areas.
In her post, she argues that projects like the ones her company develops can create jobs, establish agreements with schools and universities, and make use of renewable resources available in rural areas.
Her position is summed up in one line from her post: “Real social opposition isn’t about us showing up. It’s about us not showing up.”
She also calls for regulation to focus on demonstrable problems rather than effects that haven’t materialized yet. Figueruelo says she supports strict regulation, but believes the proposed text could end up hurting the very investment it’s meant to manage.
The government starts from a different reading. MITECO believes the scale of the requests justifies acting preemptively, since meeting all the requested capacity would require directing a significant share of planned grid investment toward this infrastructure.
The two sides agree on at least one thing: Spain has a major opportunity around digital infrastructure and renewable energy. The disagreement is over what conditions should be imposed to seize it and who should bear the cost of adapting the power grid to growing demand.
The close of the comment period on September 10 now opens a new phase. The government will have to review the submissions and decide how much of the original draft to keep.
The difference could be significant. If it keeps the 80% hourly-matching requirement, the access rules, and the sovereignty conditions largely unchanged, Spain will end up with a particularly demanding framework for new data centers. If it makes substantial changes after hearing from the industry, the text that eventually reaches the Council of Ministers could look quite different from the one that has sparked the current pushback.
