Turning waste into a resource: the new challenge for the ecological and digital transition

The rapidly expanding use of Artificial Intelligence and the cloud is driving a massive increase in the energy consumed by data centres, giving rise to a series of challenges for the sustainability and stability of the traditional electricity grid. This is the context in which we are witnessing a silent revolution, with the industry positioning itself as a key player and pioneer in off-grid solutions which combine renewable sources and, in a bold and circular approach, energy produced from waste.

A circular economy model from the United Kingdom. The British start-up Carbon3.ai has presented an ambitious plan worth 1 billion pounds sterling to build green, sovereign data centres powered by non-conventional energy sources. The company promises to transform waste into “computing power” using energy captured from exhaust gases, the incineration of waste, and solar plants, thereby preventing overloads and high costs for the national grid. This approach is not only a response to growing demand but also tackles issues surrounding data sovereignty, guaranteeing that sensitive information in sectors such as health and defence can remain within the physical and legal borders of the state. With a first site planned in the East Midlands for March 2026 and strong initial support from Valencia Energy — a renewable energy company that uses gas from exhaust waste in its production — Carbon3.ai intends to bring brownfield sites “into the future”, with the goal of keeping ownership and control of this new digital infrastructure firmly in British hands. The strategy aims to make energy cheaper and more sustainable, against a backdrop of high energy costs in the United Kingdom and further afield which risk derailing advances in the digital infrastructure necessary for strong AI development.

The Italian context: requests more than double in a single year. The need to reconcile the exponential growth of data centres with environmental sustainability is the centre of attention in Italy too. The requests for connection to the national transmission grid are growing month by month: at the end of 2025, there were 411 requests for 69.05 GW in power, more than double the approximately 30 GW value at the end of 2024, while in January 2026 connection requests rose to 449 for 78.79 GW in power. Although there is no case identical to the Carbon3.ai “exhaust gas” model, the Italian industry is exploring a variety of “green” solutions for data centres.

Aruba, for example, is actively involved in initiatives at European level, such as the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which aims to make data centres climate-neutral by 2030. The strategy adopted by the company, which offers online services such as hosting, domains, email, certified email, and cloud services, is to create “green-by-design” data centres 100% powered by renewable energy with GO (Guarantee of Origin) certification, produced partly via its own photovoltaic and hydroelectric plants. Energy efficiency and heat recovery are essential pillars for combining a sustainable solution with the ever-growing intensity of data centres’ energy needs.

Regulatory impact The Italian Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security (MASE) plays a key role in this arena, through Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) in accordance with Italian and European law. In fact, plans for large data centres or centres located in sensitive areas are subject to EA (or, more often, EIA) procedures which require in-depth assessments of all potential environmental impacts, from construction to the operational stage.
The documentation required must show how the project intends to minimise the consumption of energy resources and how it will manage waste, in line with the principles of the circular economy.

The guidelines and criteria assessed by MASE strongly encourage the adoption of solutions to improve the energy efficiency of data centres. Although there is no minimum value imposed by law, MASE looks favourably on projects with a low PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) rating (near 1), indicating a more efficient use of energy for computing compared to cooling and other auxiliary services. Moreover, the integration of renewable sources directly into the systems or via Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) guaranteeing the “green” origin of electricity is encouraged.

The aspect with the closest links to the circular economy is the requirement to consider the recovery of the waste heat generated by the servers. MASE assesses the feasibility of channelling this heat into civil or industrial uses — district heating, for example — reducing both energy waste and the thermal impact on the environment. Most important of all, projects must demonstrate that they will not destabilise the local or national electricity grid, a central issue for Terna’s operations, as the grid manager and the guarantor of its stability and resilience. The goal is to encourage solutions for the self-production or storage of energy, in order to minimize energy withdrawals at peak consumption times. Faced with this growing demand, Italy, like the United Kingdom, needs integrated strategic planning for the development of data centres which averts the risk of critical issues for energy and infrastructure.