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Alibaba Group has held preliminary discussions with Spanish clean-energy company Solaria Energía y Medio Ambiente about potentially supplying electricity to a data center in Spain, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Talks remain at an early stage
The Solaria facility under consideration is in Puertollano, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Madrid. The project would run on renewable energy, according to the report. The discussions are at an earlier stage than Alibaba’s recently announced European data center projects, and the company has also spoken with other potential power suppliers.
Alibaba said last week it plans to establish its first cloud regions in Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months. It is also expanding its data center footprint in Germany and France, the report said.
Spanish rules under preparation
The talks come as Spain prepares rules for domestic data centers. Bloomberg reported the proposed requirements would call for facilities to be operated by EU-based companies and for operational data to be stored within the bloc. The government aims to issue the rules by year-end, and they would require new data-center energy demand to be matched by newly installed clean-energy capacity.
Neither the report nor Investing.com described a finalized agreement between Alibaba and Solaria.
