RESEARCH · DATA CENTRES · SEPTEMBER 2026

PPC’s data centre — at a glance

What is coming, what is missing, what we could gain and what Το Ρεύμα proposes—a briefing for citizens.

A summary of the report ‘Data Centres in Western Macedonia’. Accompanied by Το Ρεύμα’s Proposal. The second topic in our participatory consultation series.

Yes—but with rules

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SUMMARY

In 30 seconds

01PPC and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have signed a binding Memorandum for a 300 MW data centre at Agios Dimitrios, with scope to expand to 1 GW.
02The first phase alone would have almost seven times the capacity of all data centres currently operating in Greece combined.
03There is no national or regional plan for data centres—and no specific rules for water, heat, the grid or local benefit.
04There is still time to set the rules: the final agreements, environmental permit and grid connection are still pending.
05Το Ρεύμα supports the investment—but not a blank cheque—and proposes a public Local Benefit Agreement with ten commitments and a guarantee for what happens after year 15.

THE FACTS

What happened

On 17 September 2026, PPC announced that it had signed a binding Memorandum of Cooperation with AWS. PPC is providing the land, buildings and energy infrastructure at the former Agios Dimitrios lignite power station; AWS will lease the data centre for 15 years and buy lower-cost green electricity from PPC through long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs). All commercial terms remain subject to final agreements, grid connection and regulatory approvals. Put simply: nothing has been finalised yet.

SCALE

The numbers you need to know

300 MW → 1 GW

Project capacity

This is how much power it could draw from the grid in its first phase—and up to 1 GW if expanded. All data centres in Greece combined currently total around 44 MW across 21 facilities.

3–5%

Of Greece’s total electricity

That is how much it would consume annually at 300 MW; at 1 GW, 10–15%. An indicative Το Ρεύμα calculation based on 2025 demand.

630 MW

The grid’s entire data-centre headroom in the Region

This is the capacity the government siting study identifies for new data centres in Western Macedonia through 2034. A 300 MW facility would take up almost half; 1 GW would exceed it.

400,000 m³

Water per year: PPC’s stated maximum

Roughly 160 Olympic-size swimming pools, or the annual drinking water of 480,000 people. It is a statement, not a permit condition—with no binding metric and no public monitoring.

160–470 GWh

Heat per year that could warm homes

If 10–20% of the energy is recovered for district heating, as Germany and France require for new data centres. Otherwise, it is lost to the air. Indicative calculation.

15 years

The lease term

There is no public rule for what happens afterwards: renewal, reuse or decommissioning.

€4,000

The only dedicated local revenue currently provided for

The maximum one-off operating notification fee. By comparison, Ireland’s RESS renewable-energy projects pay €2 per MWh into local funds every year—around €3.2–4.7 million annually at 300 MW. The same company, AWS, committed €30 million in social investment, more than €17 million in water projects and 17 renewable-energy projects in Aragón, Spain.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

What we still don’t know

01The rent and lease terms—and what happens after year 15.
02The price, volume and duration of the PPAs; whether new renewables will be built or existing capacity simply ‘reserved’.
03How much energy the project will consume each year and at every phase.
04Where the water will come from, how much will be needed during heatwaves, and whether the 400,000 m³ figure also applies at 1 GW.
05Whether and how the heat will be recovered.
06What backup generators it will use, what fuel they will run on and how often they will be tested.
07How many permanent jobs the data centre itself will provide: PPC’s figure of 2,000 covers its entire programme in the region, while evidence from other countries where AWS operates data centres points to about 50 permanent staff per facility.
08Who will pay for the grid upgrades.

FRAMEWORK

What is missing

A plan? There isn’t one

01At national level, there is only a non-binding siting study, which itself calls for adequacy and market-impact assessments—studies that, according to SOLOMON’s investigation, had not been completed.
02In spatial planning, no Special Spatial Framework covers data centres; according to announcements, the new industrial framework mentions them only in relation to Spata.
03For the grid, connections still follow a ‘first come, first served’ approach; the Ministry of Environment and Energy’s new framework has not been published.
04At regional level, the Regional Spatial Framework was approved in June 2024, ten months before the project was announced, while the 2020 Just Transition Plan does not mention data centres. The Region receives notifications and issues opinions—it does not plan.

THE PARADOX

The Region with the greatest available capacity for data centres in Greece is also the Region with no plan for them.

The gaps: quick to facilitate, silent on conditions

Greece makes development easier—notification instead of licensing, favourable building terms and incentives—but requires almost none of what other countries, mainly in the EU, demand:

Efficiency
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
Germany: PUE ≤ 1.2 for new facilities. Spain (draft): PUE ≤ 1.15.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
No limit
Heat
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
Germany: ERF 10–20%. France: ERF ≥ 20% from 1 MW upwards.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
No obligation; the relevant EU Directive has not yet been fully transposed
New renewables
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
Ireland: ≥ 80% from new renewables. Spain (draft): 80% new renewables and 80% hourly matching.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
No requirement
Grid
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
Ireland: their own flexible generation or storage. Ohio, USA: minimum charges and exit fees.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
General rules; ‘first come, first served’
Water
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
Spain (draft): WUE ≤ 0.1. France: permits may be refused in water-stressed areas.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
No metric, no restriction
Transparency
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
France: public data for each facility. Ireland: official statistics.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
Incomplete implementation of European rules
Local benefit
WHAT OTHERS REQUIRE
Aragón: AWS voluntarily committed €30 million, plus more than €17 million for water projects and 17 renewable-energy projects in the region. Ireland: preference for projects with community benefit.
WHAT GREECE REQUIRES TODAY
A fee of up to €4,000

IMPACT

Why it matters to you

Your electricity bill.
If the cost of new lines and substations is passed on to everyone, everyone will pay. In the largest US electricity market, the independent monitor attributes 46.2% of capacity charges across the four latest auctions to data centres. According to Friends of the Earth Ireland estimates, Irish households paid around €715 million more between 2015 and 2023 because of data-centre growth, and could pay up to €1.43 billion more between 2025 and 2034.
Water.
According to research by an NTUA professor of water resources, Western Macedonia is vulnerable to additional abstraction. Cooling also needs more water during heatwaves—precisely when everyone needs it most. According to PPC’s figures, the data centre would consume as much water as 480,000 people drink in a year.
Surplus heat.
Kozani’s district-heating system serves around 5,500 buildings and was historically supplied by the same power station. Without a plan, the data centre’s heat will be wasted.
Air, noise and temperature.
Backup generators are the main local source of emissions and noise; in Ireland, a single AWS building has generators with 110.75 MW of thermal capacity. In the Phoenix area of Arizona, from June to October 2025, air near the facilities was on average 0.7–0.9°C warmer than upwind, with peaks of up to 2.2°C; the difference was detected in neighbourhoods up to roughly half a kilometre away.
Jobs.
Many during construction, few permanent: in Virginia, typically around 50 per operating facility. The real opportunity lies in skills and local procurement—if agreed—as well as in developing an ecosystem that creates and exports digital services.

BENEFITS

What we could gain—and what we propose

Benefits that can stay in the region

Warm homes using less natural gas.
Heat for the district-heating networks of Kozani, Eordaia and Amyntaio—as AWS already provides free of charge in Tallaght, Dublin.
Green energy for households and businesses.
A community share equal to 20% of the project’s new green energy, under the same pricing formula offered to AWS, through energy sharing and energy communities.
A fund for the region.
€2 per MWh into a Community Benefit Fund: around €3.2–4.7 million per year at 300 MW, or €47–71 million over 15 years—with independent governance.
Jobs and skills.
A cloud and data-centre academy with the University of Western Macedonia and vocational education, alongside local hiring and procurement targets. In Spata, Microsoft trained 600 students and 200 residents in the first phase.
Computing power for our communities.
Cloud credits for the University, hospitals, municipalities and businesses in the region.
Water.
Projects that return more water than the data centre consumes—as AWS pledged in Aragón, with an investment of more than €17 million.

PROPOSAL

Το Ρεύμα’s proposal in 7 points

01An agreement before connection.A public Local Benefit and Sustainability Agreement between PPC, AWS and the region, in partnership with the state, with measurable targets, independent oversight and enforceable clauses, modelled on the Global Urban Data Centres Pact under the C40 network.
02Heat for district heating.At least 10% of energy recovered as heat, aiming for 20%, provided free or at cost.
03Clear limits on water.A binding annual cap, WUE below 0.1 L/kWh, no drinking water for cooling, and monthly disclosure.
04New renewables and a grid that does not burden consumers.At least 80% from new Greek renewable capacity; the investor pays for the upgrades it triggers—not households.
05A 20% community share of green energy.A 5–10% community share of green energy and a €2/MWh Community Benefit Fund for the full lease term.
06Young people, skills and computing power.An academy, local hiring and procurement targets, and cloud credits for the region.
07Transparency and a guarantee for what comes next.A public dashboard with monthly energy, water and heat data, clean backup power and noise limits, plus a guarantee of reuse or decommissioning after year 15.

At national and regional level: a national strategy for data centres and grid-connection rules for large loads; a regional plan for water, heat, land and local benefit. Everything is set out in detail in ‘Το Ρεύμα’s Proposal’.

WHAT WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR

No moratorium—the region needs investment.
No new taxes without tangible returns—we want measurable local benefit.
No hidden subsidies—we want market terms and transparency.
No political control of the fund—we want independent governance and public accountability.

GLOSSARY

The one-minute glossary

MW and MWh: MW measures power—how ‘large’ the socket is. MWh measures energy—what appears on the bill.
PUE: How much energy the whole building uses for each unit delivered to the servers. 1.0 is perfect; 1.2 means 20% extra for cooling and losses.
WUE: Litres of water per kWh of server energy. The lower, the better.
ERF: The proportion of energy that is reused—mainly as heat for homes.
PPA: A long-term power purchase agreement, usually tied to specific renewable-energy projects.
Hourly matching: Green electricity every hour—not only ‘over the year as a whole’.
Energy sharing: The right of households, small businesses and municipalities to share energy from renewable sources.
EIA and environmental permit: The project’s Environmental Impact Assessment and environmental permit: this is where the conditions can be made binding.

FULL REPORT

Read the full report

The full consultation report, including its methodology, data, calculations and all sources.

TAKE PART

Have your say

The consultation is open. Read, comment, disagree and propose. Here are some questions to begin with:

01Which project details should be made public before the Environmental Impact Assessment is submitted?
02Should Greece adopt a national data-centre strategy before connecting new projects above 100 MW?
03What concerns you most: electricity bills, water, waste heat, noise or jobs?
04Who should benefit first from the community share of green energy: vulnerable households or local businesses?
05How should the Community Benefit Fund be governed to prevent political patronage?
06What would make this project a real reason to stay in—or return to—Western Macedonia?

Comments will be brought together in a revised proposal, to be presented publicly to PPC, AWS, the government, the Region and municipalities—and submitted to the Environmental Impact Assessment consultation when it opens.

JOIN THE CONSULTATION