- Data centres of at least 1 MW would have to source 80% of their electricity from additional Spanish renewable generation, matched to consumption hour by hour.
- The proposal would connect compliance to grid access, giving the government a mechanism to penalise inactive or non-compliant projects.
- The rules remain a draft subject to consultation, but would go substantially further than conventional annual renewable-energy purchasing.
Spain has proposed one of Europe’s most demanding energy regimes for data centres, requiring large facilities to match at least 80% of their hourly electricity consumption with newly built renewable generation.
The Council of Ministers this week authorised urgent administrative processing of a draft royal decree covering the energy, environmental, resilience and digital sovereignty requirements applied to data centres. The decision begins an accelerated consultation process and does not constitute final adoption, according to the official cabinet record.
Under the proposal, facilities with electrical capacity of at least 1 MW would have to procure renewable power through on-site generation or long-term power purchase agreements. Each megawatt of new data centre demand would have to be associated with 1 MW of renewable capacity commissioned no more than 18 months before the facility began operating.
Crucially, the electricity would have to be matched hourly. Renewable generation produced during the same hour would need to cover at least 80% of consumption, rather than operators balancing demand and renewable purchases over a month or year.
Beyond green power claims
Hourly matching is the most consequential element of the draft. Annual guarantees of origin allow a continuously operating data centre to claim renewable electricity even if its demand is met by fossil generation during hours of low wind or solar output. Spain’s approach would force developers to consider the physical generation profile supporting their operations.
Compliance could require geographically and technologically diverse power-purchase portfolios, batteries or other flexibility. In practice, a one-for-one capacity requirement may not itself be sufficient because 1 MW of wind or solar generation does not produce 1 MW continuously.
Developers may therefore need to contract more than the nominal minimum, although the eventual requirement will depend on the decree’s final drafting and verification rules.
The renewable threshold would remain in force until renewables exceeded 90% of Spain’s electricity mix, at which point it could be revised. Projects would also face stringent energy and water efficiency requirements, while operators handling sensitive public sector or national security data would have to keep operational data under EU control.
The government says data centres have secured more than 12 GW of grid access and connection rights since 2021. The proposed regime is intended partly to prevent speculative projects from reserving scarce network capacity without a credible route to construction.
Non-compliance could trigger escalating network charges or ultimately the loss of grid access. Transitional arrangements would give projects already in permitting six months to demonstrate compliance, while those awaiting competitive grid-allocation procedures would have three months.
For data centre investors, this raises development costs and contracting complexity. It also offers a clearer route to approval for projects prepared to finance generation, storage and network-compatible demand.
The wider significance is that Spain is treating data centres as active participants in electricity system development, rather than ordinary consumers entitled to take power whenever a connection becomes available. That principle could influence other constrained European markets.
Britain has so far concentrated on accelerating viable connections and deterring speculative applications, including through proposed upfront commitment fees. Spain’s draft asks a more fundamental question: what new supply and flexibility should a large, near-continuous electricity user bring with it?
