Technology 4 min read By Bethany Hadley
PPC and AWS sign agreement to build data centre at former Greek coal plant
Greece's largest power company and Amazon's cloud arm have agreed to develop a data centre in Western Macedonia with an initial capacity of 300MW, potentially rising to 1GW.
Greece's largest energy company and Amazon's cloud computing arm have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a data centre in the country's Western Macedonia region, in a deal that could bring up to 1 gigawatt of power capacity to one of Europe's most coal-dependent areas.
Public Power Corporation (PPC) and Amazon Web Services said the agreement sets out the framework and principal terms for a data centre facility at Agios Dimitrios, on the site of what was once Greece's largest coal-fired power station. The initial phase of the project is expected to have an input power capacity of 300 megawatts, with the potential to scale up to 1GW as demand develops.
The memorandum was announced by PPC in a press release on Thursday, 17 September. It does not yet constitute a binding construction contract, but it establishes the commercial and technical terms under which the two sides will proceed.
The choice of location is significant. Agios Dimitrios sits in the heart of Greece's lignite belt, an area that has supplied a large share of the country's electricity for decades and where the phase-out of coal has raised questions about jobs and economic activity. PPC has been converting former mining and generation sites into new industrial uses as part of its transition away from lignite.
PPC is majority-owned by the Greek state, which holds more than 34 per cent of its capital. The company is also a significant investor in Romania, having taken over the Romanian operations and assets of Italy's Enel group in 2023. That acquisition made PPC one of the largest energy suppliers in the Romanian market and expanded its footprint across south-eastern Europe.
For AWS, the agreement represents a further commitment to European data centre capacity at a time when demand for cloud and artificial intelligence computing is rising sharply. Large technology companies have been racing to secure land, power connections and renewable energy supplies across the continent, and grid capacity has become one of the main constraints on new projects.
The scale of the proposed facility underlines how much electricity modern data centres require. A 300MW first phase would consume roughly as much power as a medium-sized city, while a full 1GW build-out would place the site among the largest single power consumers in Greece. That makes the availability of reliable generation and transmission infrastructure central to whether the project proceeds as planned.
Western Macedonia has been a focus of Greek efforts to attract replacement investment as coal plants close. The region benefits from existing high-voltage grid connections built to serve the old power stations, as well as a large industrial footprint and a workforce with energy-sector experience. Those advantages are likely to have weighed in the selection of Agios Dimitrios over other candidate sites.
The memorandum does not specify a construction timetable, the total value of the investment or the number of jobs the data centre might create. Further agreements would be needed before building work begins, and the project would also depend on grid connection approvals and the availability of power supplies.
If it goes ahead at full scale, the development would mark one of the largest technology infrastructure investments in Greece and a notable test of whether former coal regions can attract the digital economy. It would also deepen the relationship between a state-controlled utility and one of the world's largest cloud providers, at a moment when European governments are seeking to keep data and computing capacity within their own borders.
