Aruba Acquires Three Hydroelectric Plants in Turin, Boosting Italian Renewable Energy Portfolio

Italian data center operator Aruba has expanded its renewable energy infrastructure with the acquisition of three hydroelectric plants located near Turin, Italy. The newly acquired facilities, situated in the municipalities of Cafasse, Balangero, and Lanzo Torinese along the Stura di Lanzo river, are expected to generate approximately 10 GWh of renewable electricity annually. Financial terms of the deal, announced this week, were not disclosed.

The acquisition underscores Aruba’s long-term strategy to increase its direct control over clean energy production, a move that directly supports the sustainability goals of its expanding data center operations. With these additions, Aruba now owns a total of 11 hydroelectric plants across Italy, bringing its total installed capacity to 11.6 MW. The group’s overall annual hydroelectric generation capacity has surpassed 60 GWh. These plants are distributed across five rivers in four Italian regions: Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

“Every new plant that joins our facilities portfolio increases the share of clean energy we produce directly and make available to the country's digital infrastructure,” said Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba. “This is a path we have been pursuing consistently for years. Growing in renewable generation means reducing the environmental impact not only of our services, but also of the IT infrastructure that customers choose to install in our data centers. For us, sustainability is not a statement: it is an industrial asset, built plant by plant.”

This latest deal continues a pattern of strategic investments in hydropower for Aruba. The company previously acquired two hydroelectric sites with a combined capacity of 2 MW in April 2023, and four plants totaling 6 MW in late 2020. In 2024, the company also reactivated a decommissioned micro-hydro dam in Melegnano. More recently, Aruba completed work on a third turbine at its hydroelectric plant located within its Ponte San Pietro campus in Bergamo.

Aruba’s primary data center campus in Bergamo, located outside Milan, currently houses three buildings. The original facility offers 8,000 sqm (86,100 sq ft) of colocation space across 10 data rooms with 12 MW of capacity. Buildings B and C provide 9 MW and 8 MW of capacity, respectively, across 4,950 sqm (53,280 sq ft) and 5,950 sqm (64,050 sq ft) of colocation space. The campus integrates a mix of solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal systems and is designed for expansion, with the potential to host up to five buildings totaling 60 MW of capacity across 200,000 sqm (2,152,800 sq ft). Founded in 1994, Aruba also operates two facilities in Arezzo, one in Rome, and another in Ktiš, Czech Republic.