The Monfarracinos data center, with an expected investment of €4.6 billion, opens a debate about energy consumption, emissions, and its role in the ecological transition.
How is energy supplied to a large artificial intelligence facility? The Monfarracinos data center in Zamora serves as a case study to answer that question. With an expected investment of €4.6 billion, the complex comes with an energy demand of such magnitude that it has been questioned by Manuel García Domínguez, a predoctoral researcher at the Carlos III University of Madrid and the CSIC.
Its analysis raises a fundamental question for assessing the project: where will the energy required to keep it running come from, and what emissions will be associated with it?
In this article we will address the researcher’s estimates, the alternatives he proposes, and his criticisms of the public-information process. By doing so, we can understand the debate over the scale and energy design of data centers, as well as distinguish the expected impacts from the regulatory conditions that are still being developed.
The Monfarracinos Data Center
The artificial intelligence data center planned for Monfarracinos (Zamora), with an anticipated private investment of €4.6 billion, will consume annually an amount of energy equal to 20% of the total current energy consumption of all of Castilla y León and three times what the province of Zamora uses, according to a warning by CSIC expert Manuel García Domínguez.
García Domínguez highlighted that figure and the fact that this self-powered AI data center would obtain 30% of its energy from a thermal plant that will emit about 307,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, as he stressed in statements to EFE ahead of delivering a conference on the impacts of these facilities on Wednesday afternoon.
This predoctoral researcher from the Carlos III University of Madrid and the CSIC delivered a Wednesday afternoon lecture in Zamora organized by two neighborhood platforms that have expressed their reservations about the project, in collaboration with the Zamora Ecologists association.
García Domínguez described the energy consumption and the share sourced from that associated thermal plant as a “ridiculous amount,” both in terms of energy sovereignty and within the context of ecological transition and decarbonization.
Likewise, he warned about the emissions of toxic gases such as nitrogen oxides that that plant will emit and about the extent of the accompanying photovoltaic solar plant, of around a thousand hectares, which would cover 18% of the municipality of Villalube and would extend into neighboring municipalities as well.
This researcher has warned that the data center would not meet the draft Royal Decree being prepared by the Spanish government on the conditions such facilities must meet, since the draft sets the minimum renewable share at 80%, while the Zamora projection would be around 70%.
More Renewable Energy and Less Pollution
In his view, if the project were modified to overdimension the photovoltaic array, include a larger battery system to store energy during the day, and adjust the data center’s asynchronous processes to run during the sunniest daytime hours, the share of energy from non-renewable sources could be significantly reduced.
Similarly, the use of renewable energy sources could approach almost 100% if the project were smaller in scale.
Manuel García Domínguez noted that, based on the project data, water consumption—around 18,000 cubic meters per year—does not appear to be a major issue, and he urged not to create “alarmism” about this matter.
Lack of Transparency Is a Serious Problem
This expert lamented the lack of transparency in the information and public-participation processes during the processing of this project, something he considers to be widespread in the deployment of data centers in Spain and that generates a great deal of distrust.
In this regard, he indicated that if the project is so good and that the anticipated €4.6 billion investment would economically compensate for possible impacts on the territory and the project itself, the public authorities and the data-center promoter would have no problems and should be “shouting it from the rooftops,” something that does not happen.
The data center planned in the Zamora Norte industrial estate of Monfarracinos, processed as a regional project to speed up procedures, would consist of five large computer and server halls, a cogeneration thermal plant, a battery energy-storage system, and a photovoltaic solar park spanning around a thousand hectares.
According to the project, the facilities would directly employ between 439 and 499 people once up and running, in addition to the jobs generated by the construction works, whose cost is estimated at €4.6 billion.
