* Lombardy region sees up to €12 bln investment in 5 years

* Southern Puglia also bids to become digital hub

* Lombardy seeks to promote use of existing brownfield sites

* Italy hosts an estimated 205 data centres

By Giancarlo Navach

MILAN, June 10 (Reuters) - The Lombardy region, with Milan

at its heart, has approved a law intended as a framework to

regulate and manage demand for data centres, a sector expected

to boom over the next five years with investments estimated at

around €22 billion ($25 billion) in Italy, regional councilor

Massimo Sertori told Reuters.

At the same time, the southern region of Puglia is

positioning itself as one of the main digital hubs in southern

Italy and the Mediterranean area.

"Italy is set to see the construction of approximately 3

gigawatts of new data centre capacity; of these, 1.5 to 2

gigawatts will be built in Lombardy over the next five years,"

Sertori said, adding that €10 to €12 billion were likely to go

to Lombardy out of the total €22 billion investment.

The regional authorities in Lombardy plan to make it cheaper

for developers to use brownfield sites, rather than building on

farmland or parks.

According to a study by researchers at the Data Center

Observatory of Milan's Politecnico University, the Milan area

remains Italy's main data centre hub, accounting for 68% of the

country's total installed nominal power capacity in the sector.

The city also accounts for 23% of all investments announced

in the sector at the European level, the study said.

"Rather than simply enduring it, it is better to manage this

process, which will continue regardless and is inevitable. For

this reason, we aim to simplify procedures," Sertori said.

"We are pushing for these investments to be made on

brownfield sites - abandoned industrial areas - and strongly

encouraging that they not be built on agricultural land or

undeveloped sites," he added.

"If the request involves agricultural land, construction

charges will be 100% higher, and 200% higher in parks or

sensitive areas."

PUGLIA SEES CHANCE TO PROSPER

Over the 2026-2028 period, 30 companies - including 19 new

operators - have announced 83 new infrastructure projects in

Italy with a total potential value of €25.4 billion, the

Politecnico study said.

However, 72% of these investments come from new

international operators not yet active in Italy, and timelines

could be extended by the lack of a standardized approval

process.

Costs are also a challenge. Building the infrastructure

alone for a 100 MW data centre - excluding servers - costs

around €1 billion on average, equivalent to roughly €10 million

per MW, an industry source said.

Italy hosts around 205 data centres, mainly concentrated

around Rome and Milan, but Puglia is also seeking to benefit

from the trend, particularly around Bari, the regional capital,

thanks to submarine fibre-optic cables landing there.

Among the projects are plans to convert the area of a former

tobacco factory in Bari into a 200 MW data centre, with work due

to start at the end of the year.

"There are several project proposals in the Bari area

because this is where connectivity from the Middle East and

other regions arrives through the Adriatic," Eugenio Di

Sciascio, Puglia's regional councilor for economic development,

told Reuters.

"This facilitates the presence of these facilities. We are

receiving double-digit numbers of requests to build data

centres," he added.

($1 = 0.8657 euros)

(Editing by Keith Weir)