Simon Hunter
A PLANNED data centre that will serve Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is due to be built in the Toledo municipality of Talavera de la Reina. The structure, however, will require some 660 million litres of water a year to run, in an area that is in danger of drought.
The project was given approval as a Project of Singular Interest (PSI) by the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha in March, according to local media outlet Toledo Diario.
This means that the project will be fast-tracked given the economic impact it will have on the region.
But among the plans from the company are a requirement for 200 million litres of water a year for the data centre itself, and then another 440 million for the rest of the infrastructure on the site according to a report in Spanish daily El Pais.
The newspaper claims that the Meta site is in an ‘area in danger of drought’, and that it would require increased consumption from the River Tajo basin.
But the regional premier of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano Garcia-Page of the Socialist Party, said that his government would not allow for a lack of water to ‘endanger the arrival of companies’, according to Toledo Diario.
Garcia-Page is one of the many politicians running at the upcoming regional and local elections that will be held across Spain on May 28.
Barring any obstacles, the work to build the Meta Data Center Campus will begin at the end of this year.
It will occupy a 125-hectare plot of land in an industrial park, and once running will be part of Meta’s data centres that will support the ‘metaverse’, a virtual world that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has touted as ‘the future of the internet’.
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