With the submission of the investment dossier “Investment in Data Centers in Greece”, Microsoft puts forward the largest technological investment that has been made in the country. Almost fifteen months after the formal announcement of the investment, whose financial footprint will exceed 1 billion euros, the investment plan was put up for consultation on the page of Enterprise Greece, in order to be included in the status of strategic investments.
The three Data Centers, for which several districts appeared last year among the claimants, will finally be installed on three plots in Spata and Koropi and will be a triple infrastructure, the net cost of which, according to market experts, will exceed 400 million euros.
The project concerns the creation of a Complex of Data Centers and Technological Support of Businesses, consisting of 3 Data Centers, in the prefecture of Attica, of the company Microsoft Operations 4733 Hellas Single Member S.A. The goal of the investment, which until now covered a veil of mystery, is the development and provision of cloud computing services, Microsoft Cloud, in Greece.
The 3 Data Centers, as roughly described during the announcement of the investment in October 2020, will be fully interdependent with each other, essentially constituting a business, operational and financial entity, at three locations.
As defined in the summary of the investment plan, submitted to Enterprise Greece one year after the relevant announcement (07.10.2021) and with modifications shortly before the Christmas holidays, the installation site called Site 6 is located in the Municipality of Spata – Artemis, while the plots with the names Site 27 & Site 28 in the Municipality of Kropia. These are not located within areas that fall under environmental or archaeological commitment schemes and do not constitute forest areas as a whole.
As for the total budget of the project, it is predicted that “it will amount to several hundred million euros, while it is expected to create, in a sustainable way, more than a hundred new annual work positions”. Therefore, it meets the conditions for inclusion in the status of strategic investments and in particular provisions of Law 4864/2012 as Strategic Investment 1 (article 2 §1a), as it is an investment of over 75 million euros.
The investment has the character of the ultimate sustainable approach, as it embraces the goals of sustainable development and adopts the strategy ́ “Carbon Negative, Water Positive and Zero Waste by 2030”, according to which Microsoft aims to cover 100% of its electricity with zero carbon energy markets, to cool the systems with air instead of water and to recycle and reuse 90% of the machinery and components that are replaced.
The investment, as pointed out in the summary, is expected to make the greatest contribution to the economy at local and national level, to employment over a decade, as well as to the transfer of knowledge and technology.
