IT services provider Comtel has announced a new data center for Florence, in central Italy.

The facility is intended to form part of a larger renewable energy complex named H2-Era Green Valley proposed by a consortium led by the engineering firm Ge-Group in Figline Valdarno, a town southeast of the city.

Billed as a ‘zero-impact’ data center, the site will be powered by an 84MW solar plant, while waste heat from its servers will be siphoned to food production facilities elsewhere in the complex.

No information has been released about the data center’s IT compute capacity, its precise size or its construction cost. DCD has approached Comtel for comment.

“The data center market is experiencing unprecedented growth and requires partners capable of managing complex end-to-end projects,” said Comtel’s managing director Mattia Conti. “Comtel has the expertise, industry connections, and operational capacity to position itself as a one-stop partner, from design and construction through to infrastructure management, creating value for customers, partners, and shareholders.”

The site at Figline Valdarno was occupied by a factory producing tire-reinforcing steel cord owned by the manufacturer Bekaert. In 2018, however, the Belgium-based firm announced it was closing the facility, leading to the loss of 318 jobs. Four years later, the site was bought by a Ge-Group-led consortium and renamed H2-Era Green Valley.

Though full planning permission for the development has yet to be granted, the centerpiece of the site is intended to be an 84MW solar plant, which will constitute the primary power source for the data center co-developed with Comtel. Any excess energy will also be used to generate green hydrogen, while waste heat from the data center will be siphoned into a vertical farming unit.

Founded in 1992 and headquartered in Milan, Comtel provides IT infrastructure for data centers, among other services. If built, the facility in Figline Valdarno will be the firm’s first to directly operate.

In comparison to national hubs like Milan and Rome, the data center market in Florence is small. According to DataCenterMap, the city currently hosts only three facilities.

Learn more about the data center market in Italy and Southern Europe, and meet with other executives and experts from the region at the DCN Milan event next year.