In an increasingly digital economy, data centers, infrastructures where data is stored and processed on a large scale, are becoming essential pieces for companies. This is confirmed by the dynamism that this sector is registering, originally focused on markets such as Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris, but with an already consolidated focus on Madrid and with the forecast of exponentially developing Barcelona. Specifically, the consultant CBRE predicts that the supply of data centers in the Catalan capital will grow by 500% in the next five years, being one of the ten European cities facing the greatest potential growth.
According to CBRE, Barcelona will benefit from factors such as its location, with the presence of submarine cables, and its positioning as a technological hub. The Catalan capital also benefits from market saturation, further aggravated by the constant growth in demand and the low availability in the cities that have led the sector. Furthermore, with an increasingly connected world, companies are opting to have data centers closer to end-users, thus guaranteeing a better quality of the services they offer. The high energy requirements of these facilities also encourage their decentralization.
One of the main investments announced for Barcelona in the data centers market will be in Cerdanyola del Vallès, in the Parc de l'Alba, where one of the most important scientific infrastructures in the country, the Alba synchrotron, is located. The land had until now been owned by Cerámicas Catalonia. Its good connections have played in favor of this location, as well as the new submarine fiber optic cable station in Sant Adrià de Besòs, developed by the Catalan company AFR-IX.
The project is led by the German fund Aquila Capital, through its business unit AQ Compute and with the advice of CBRE, with an expected outlay of 300 million euros. It is expected to be operational by the last quarter of 2024 and, for now, AQ Compute is already in talks with some companies interested in contracting its services. The Cerdanyola data center will be the second data center built by the company, which already has one in Norway. It plans to invest in ten more European cities, three of them in the next year. Aquila Capital has been operating in Catalonia since 2016, where it has transacted 790 million euros in the residential sector, with more than 350,000 square meters.
Henry Daunet, executive vice president of AQ Compute, details that the facility will have a total area of 7,000 square meters, with enough space to include training and innovation centers, in addition to offices. "We don't want to build a closed box, it will be a multipurpose building with open spaces," explains Daunet, who hopes it will also be a talent hub, considering that it employs high-level technical profiles. The mayor of Cerdanyola, Carlos Cordón, quantifies the direct jobs to be created at 300, to which another 1,500 indirect jobs will be added.
The future AQ Compute data center will include training and innovation centersThe data center that AQ Compute will develop in Cerdanyola will have an electrical capacity of 50 megawatts (MW). The AQ-BCN1 will not be the only one the German company will propose in Barcelona. "When you enter a city, you establish a long-term commitment," Daunet remarks.The executive indicates that, in general, an infrastructure of these characteristics is associated with the construction of two more, taking into account that the companies that contract their services want to guarantee the continuity of supply if one fails. According to the executive vice president of AQ Compute, the next installation in the Catalan capital could begin to be considered five years from now and would not necessarily have to be explicitly located in the Parc de l'Alba.
Other data center projects being developed in Catalonia are Edged Energy in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, with an electrical capacity of 16 MW; Interxion in Sant Adrià de Besòs (15 MW); Edgeconnex in Viladecans (8MW), and Adam in Cerdanyola del Vallès (4 MW). With these future data centers, it is estimated that the available electrical capacity in Barcelona will multiply by five in the coming years, going from the current 17 MW to 84 MW, according to calculations by the consulting firm CBRE. In Madrid, the current capacity is 115 MW and is expected to reach 140 MW. The availability of land is one of the challenges of this market, taking into account that it does not exist and has to be developed and, therefore, requires a lot of time and investment.