The debate on Location of data centersso far confined to an eminently technical-industrial area, is finally traced back to a legal framework that assumes the “Soil resource” as the supporting axis of any territorial policy choice.
Worthy of attention is the activity that is carried out today in Territory Commission of Infrastructure and Mobility of the Lombardy Regionwhere he finally approaches, with the first auditions, to the theme of data centers, looking at the exploitation of soil and resources.
Natural seat to host any regulatory interventions is certainly the Regional law 11 March 2005, n. 12 (Law for the territory of the territory).
It is important to take on what starting point the fact that the data centers cannot develop in a reckless way in the Lombardy territory.
In this perspective, I hope that this can start a path for the introduction of a discipline that has as a priority objective theidentification of disused or underutilized appropriate areaswith georeferenced mapping, so from prevent the subtraction of agricultural, productive and commercial land And Redistribute the energy and water load connected to digital infrastructure equally on the regional territory.
The theoretical premise of this concept is the constitutional qualification of the soil as a common good intended: not only physical substrate but factor of production, landscape, historical memory and storage of ecosystem services.
The statement, with a rank of general principle, of the Net consumption rule of zero and, in particular, the ban on the subtraction of agricultural soil, manufacturing or intended for trade in the absence of a rigorous prevalence test of the public interest.
This goal, to be achieved, requires the demonstration – entrusted to a territorial feasibility study certified by an independent third subject – who do not exist localization alternatives in abandoned or compromised areas, already infrastructured in terms of the electrical network and connectivity. At the same time, the proposer should be burdened by the burden of producing an ex -ecosystem balance that quantifies the loss of agricultural or commercial profitability, provides for environmental compensation measures and indicates the extension of land subject to ecological recovery in relationship at least one compared to the new waterproofed surface.
This first level of protection, of substantial nature, finds strengthening in a procedural garrison: the merger, in a single authority procedure, of the construction security, the landscape evaluation, the verification of energy compatibility and the single environmental authorization. The temporal and formal unity of these checks prevents an isolated favorable opinion, rendered in the absence of the overall picture of the impacts, sterilizes the conformative function of the public interest.
On the side of the energy equalization, the legislator should insert two complementary tools.
The first is certainly a “Territorial balance plan”which becomes an indefectible condition for the construction of plants whose request for power exceeds the threshold defined annually by the Regional Energy Authority. Through this plan, the manager must demonstrate that at least half of the additional needs will be covered by renewable sources located within a maximum radius of 150 km, or by purchasing surplus shares produced in less infrastructured areas: in this way an embankment of electrical consumption is accepted in the areas already exposed to infrastructure stress and is incentive, at the same time, the growth of energy community in territories in territories in territories in territories peripheral or mountains.
The second tool could be the “Territorial energy load index”calculated annually for each provincial context on the basis of the installed power, the availability of industrial water for cooling, the degree of waterproofing and the residual capacity of the networks. Upon reaching the saturation threshold, an automatic moratorium mechanism takes place, which blocks the release of new qualifications up to the strengthening of the infrastructure or the reduction of consumption through efficiency interventions.
Today there is the need to enhance those contexts where it is possible to implement urban regeneration. In this sense, the principle that the intervention in an abandoned warehouse or in an abandoned industrial site benefits from a preferential lane, provided that the project provides for the reuse of waste thermal energy for district heating networks or for agro-food-food initiatives with a short chain initiatives, so as to transform a potential environmental cost into a flywheel of circular economy, would be to be enhanced in this sense. A mechanism of “energy compensation“Which combines the ecological compensation traditionally referring to the restoration of the soil, configuring a paradigm in which efficiency becomes a structural element of urban legitimacy.
On the level of responsibility it will be necessary to provide a double sanctioning track. The administrative offense, sanctioned with the revocation of the title and with the restoration in pristine, should be accompanied by a progressive pecuniary sanction, parameterized not to the surface but to the Gigawattara consumed in surplus with respect to the commitments made in the balance plan. This choice, consistent with the European principle “Whoever pollutes pays”it should affect the mere physical dimension of the system but the actual use of resources, discouraging opportunistic behaviors based on energy estimates of convenience and rewarding the most virtuous managers in terms of efficiency.
Another aspect to ensure transparency could be to establish a Public register of needs and withdrawalspowered by the data transmitted by both the managers of the network and by the owners of the plants, also providing for a refresher obligation (at least quarterly) and the publication of the open data relating to location, committed powers, water flows and compensatory measures, to allow local communities, economic subjects and the same administration to supervise real time on compliance with the energy thresholds and the evolution of the territorial load index, reducing, reducing The information asymmetry that often prevented participatory control of the impacts.
It is necessary to overturn the idea that the data economy can lay on a regulatory structure of mere infrastructure facilitation.
Soil and energy, for their very nature finished and manned by primary public interests, must be design parameters ex ante and not obstacles to manage ex post. The settlement of the data centers, far from the remaining technical contingency, turns into a test of a urban-environmental law capable of combining digital innovation, Protection of production functions And territorial rebalancingaccording to a logic in which competitiveness is measured not only in terms of computational ability but also – and above all – in terms of overall sustainability and equitable distribution of the benefits and charges between the different local communities.