Overview
- The government has signalled it wants to approve a royal decree regulating new data centres before the early elections on 29 November to limit speculative projects and control scarce grid connection capacity.
- The draft would force new facilities to cover 80% of their electricity each hour with renewable generation built recently and set tight efficiency and water-use limits, while proposing penalties that include 10%–500% surcharges on electricity network tariffs called peajes.
- The CNMC has formally recommended softening the draft by applying targets progressively, extending the 18-month window for linking new renewables, exempting hours with renewable surpluses, and removing peajes as a vehicle for fines because those charges fall under the regulator's competence.
- Industry groups and local administrations say the current draft would choke investment and delay projects, while government figures show a backlog of grid access requests far above expected 2030 demand (roughly 12,500 MW of permits versus a 3,500–4,000 MW projection) and more than 600 public consultation submissions.
- The decree still needs final internal reports and legal review, so the outcome will depend on whether the government accepts CNMC fixes; if unchanged, technical limits on hourly matching, storage lead times and permitting could force costly overbuilding of renewables and higher network charges.