The world’s biggest technology firms are investing billions in cloud storage facilities in the northeastern Spanish region of Aragon, drawn to its abundance of renewable energy sources.
While local authorities hope to reap the economic benefits of the ever-growing data demands of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, environmentalists have criticised the vast quantities of water and power that data storage consumes.
Until recently, Aragon “was not on the map of global connectivity. But today everyone knows where it is,” said Manuel Gimenez, executive director of an association grouping 170 data centre firms.
At the end of May, Amazon said it was investing 15.7 billion euros ($17 billion) in the region through its AWS cloud computing division to expand its three existing data centres in Aragon, set up since 2022.
In early July, Microsoft said it was investing 2.2 billion euros in a huge data centre project, raising its total investment …