A planned four-building data center in Moncalieri, Piedmont, would deliver 576MW of electrical capacity across roughly 2.9 million sq ft (270,000 sqm) — a scale that would likely make it the largest facility in Italy.

The developer has submitted a plan setting out the project's scope and characteristics, Torino Sud reported. Councilor Valentina Cera confirmed the project became public on 17 September and said it "would likely become the largest facility in Italy."

Where will the data center be built?

The site is the former Industria Libraria Tipografica Editrice (ILTE) industrial complex in Moncalieri, southwest of Turin. ILTE was a major Italian printing and publishing company, founded in Turin in 1947, which closed in 2016.

In 2023, the ILTE building was listed for sale at €4 million ($4.5m) on property portal Idealista.

What does this mean for Piedmont's regulation push?

Piedmont is preparing a law to regulate data center infrastructure development in the region. Cera argued the project's scale adds urgency to that legislative effort.

"The succession of new, ever-larger projects makes the adoption of a clear, uniform, and preventive regional regulatory framework urgent and unavoidable," Cera said. "The absence of such regulations creates difficulties for individual municipalities and local communities."

She noted that the Regional Council of Piedmont had already identified regional legislation as one of its regulatory objectives for 2026.

"We would therefore like to know the current status of the approval process for the regional bill, which is now urgent," Cera said.

How is the public being consulted?

Enrico Bussalino, regional councilor and assessor for the Piedmont Region, said a public consultation has been launched to collect comments, contributions and proposals on the project.

"The aim is to launch a participatory process based on transparency and dialog with the local community," Bussalino said. "Contributions already received are currently being reviewed by the technical departments for the necessary assessments."

"Once this preliminary review is complete, the department will initiate the procedure to draft a new law," he added.

How does Lombardy's law compare?

Piedmont's neighbor Lombardy, which has become a primary target for data center development in Italy, recently passed Regional Law No. 11/2026 — the country's first regulatory framework for data center approvals.

The law aims to:

• Promote the sustainability of new developments
• Encourage construction on brownfield sites
• Establish approval procedures for the sector

Piedmont's proposed framework would follow a comparable path. The Moncalieri project itself fits the brownfield model, occupying the site of a defunct printing operation rather than undeveloped land.