Impulsa Galicia, a public-private partnership from the Galician local government, has selected Ingenostrum to partner with it on a €400m ($424m) carbon-neutral data center project.

Ingenostrum, a renewable energy specialist, has been asked to analyze the feasibility of a carbon-positive 15MW data center that could house data from Galician companies and institutions.

"The data center is one of the projects included in the Pole for the Transformation of Galicia, with which we are making progress in achieving a digital and sustainable economic model,” said Impulsa Galicia director Enyd Lopez. “We developed an innovative idea, we turned it into a tractor project and found it a technologist and investor so that it could prosper outside of our umbrella."

Impulsa Galicia is backed by the Xunta de Galicia, a government decision-making body of the region, and is estimating that the project will need a total investment of €400m ($424m); €130m ($137.9m) of which will go on construction and the remaining €270m ($286m) on IT servers.

The company is hoping that the project will bring around 300 jobs to the area throughout the start-up and maintenance periods. No deadlines have yet been given for this project.

The data center is intended to host a carbon-positive Galician cloud service, and according to Juan Luis Vargas, a member of the executive committee of Impulsa Galicia, would benefit all sectors.

Santiago Rodríguez, CEO of Ingenostrum, said: "This is a very exciting project for Ingenostrum because it consolidates us as a leading company in the conceptualization of data centers." Ingenostrum was previously involved in the 150MW data center being built in Cáceres, Spain.

The project was proposed to the president of the Xunta de Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, who said that it was ‘worth considering at least and seeing if this investment is possible’ as it would serve many Galician companies.

Impulsa Galicia is made up of Xunta, financial entity Abanca, energy company Reganosea, and public company Sogama. Founded over a year and a half ago, the group contributed a capital of €5m ($5.3m) for future projects, intending to advance the digitization of the region.