As an Italian, I second that this is clearly a populist manoeuvre. Nobody in their sound mind would ever build a big datacentre in Northern Italy, the energy costs are way too expensive. There is no untapped hydro power available, fossil fuel is obviously always going to be more expensive than elsewhere, no nuclear power and you can't roll in a massive solar array with batteries due to how cramped the Po Valley already is. It would ironically make more sense to build it in Southern Italy, where once the political issues are sorted out, the access to wind and solar power are way easier and there are a lot of underdeveloped areas.

But yes, in general Italy (or Europe, maybe except France or Northern Europe with hydro power) isn't the best place to build data centres.

> blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general.

I think you're somewhat misunderstanding how things in Italy have been working for the better part of the last 2 decades. I am 95% certain that this measure was passed *precisely* because it had zero concrete political downsides. Italian political culture thrives in draconian or purely populist measures that end up being absolutely irrelevant or unenforced (with some terrible miscalculation every once in a blue moon, see the closure of nuclear power plants). You ban something, you get the political clout of doing that, and then nobody actually checks whether the government ever attempted to enforce that law, or that nobody was going to do it in the first place.

Trust in me when I say, if building datacentres in Italy were economically sound nobody would have wanted to pass this measure

So we have to give up our land, our water, our energy, even our planet just to usher in “the future”? What does this “future” do for us besides take our jobs? We literally have a say in how the future looks.

> Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland)

I think you are discounting the speed at which solar is accelerating in southern Europe. Power is already pretty much free during the daytime on the Spanish and Italian grids, and grid-scale battery installations are starting to come online to spread that curve wider.

> I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction

read the article:

> Lombardy alone accounted for 63% of the applications submitted throughout Italy.

> There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation.

> If the Milan hinterland is the most 'targeted' area, an increase in interest is also registered in the other provinces: in the rest of Lombardy there are three already active, plus one under construction and five under evaluation.

wow, I'm so excited for this "future" where everyone is laid off and miserable

>It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards

No. In northern italy alone we have tens of thousands unused warehouse spaces.

Let's use that space for datacenters and solar farms instead of destroying forever yet another plot of fertile land.

If data centers will also bring nuclear to power them, i'm all for it. But let's be honest: realistically they will be powered by coal, maybe gas.

As to why we have so much unused warehouses: some legally have no owner, some have declared bankrupcy and will be leased at absurd prices (it will cost half to build a new one), some were costructed illegaly and all stay there in the limbo because the local administrations would have to pay to reclaim the land

> Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction

There's a contradiction between your two first sentences…

> It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards.

I believe it has more to do with preserving the landscape that attracts so many tourists.

Solar farms in Italy faced resistance for the same reason.

It's not green politics.

Pretty sure blocking it will work perfectly.

You speak of the future as if it were some certain inevitable thing.

The future is what we as humans decide it to be.

Many humans don't like this vision of the future, where we burn our planet so as to concentrate even more power in the hands of the super wealthy. This is them shaping their own future.

> blocking the future won't play out nicely

What does that even mean?

> But blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general.

Maybe find scalable alternatives or software optimizations that do not require the worlds energy or building even more data centers everywhere and further burning up the planet?