In the old lignite yard of Agios Dimitrios — where fuel was stockpiled for decades before making its way to the plant’s boilers — Public Power Corporation (PPC) is preparing to build an entirely different kind of value-generating machine. It won’t burn lignite, and it won’t produce electricity. It will process data — powering cloud services and artificial intelligence applications. The 300 MW data center that PPC and Amazon Web Services are planning together may be the clearest symbol yet of a new era dawning over Western Macedonia.
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From lignite to data centers: What the agreement entails
The September 17th agreement puts an official stamp on — and adds real commercial weight to — a plan that PPC has been developing for some time. Under the terms of the deal, AWS will lease the data center for 15 years; PPC will provide the land, buildings, and energy infrastructure, while the American tech giant will install and operate the IT equipment. The first phase covers 300 MW, with an operational target by the end of 2028, and there is an option to scale up to 1 GW.
For PPC, this is about far more than landing a major new electricity customer. The business model combines long-term infrastructure leasing with multi-year Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for electricity supply. Capital expenditure for the first phase is estimated at approximately €1.2 billion, while management has indicated a recurring EBITDA contribution of around €170 million per year from 2030 onwards — not including PPA margins.
When Amazon’s technology equipment is factored in — particularly the high-performance computing infrastructure — the total capital associated with the first 300 MW is estimated to exceed €10 billion. But getting Kozani from lignite mines to server rooms has required an entire second chapter in the region’s history. For nearly seven decades, Western Macedonia’s value lay buried underground.
From the late 1950s onwards, lignite fed a vast industrial ecosystem centered on Ptolemaida, Kardia, Amyntaio, and Agios Dimitrios. At its peak in 2002, production at the region’s mines reached 55.8 million tonnes. The fuel gave rise to an entire economy — contractors, engineering firms, transport companies, maintenance crews, and suppliers. The phase-out of lignite gradually severed that lifeline. Yet it did not erase what lignite had left behind: vast tracts of land, substations, high-voltage transmission lines, heavy-duty technical infrastructure, water resources, and a workforce experienced in large-scale energy operations. That legacy is precisely the capital on which PPC is now building.
Visible transformation
The first signs of change are already visible in the landscape. Where excavators and conveyor belts once operated, rows of solar panels now stretch across the terrain. By April, PPC had completed renewable energy installations totalling 2.13 GW in Western Macedonia, with an average annual output of 3,150 GWh — nearly 6% of total demand on the Greek interconnected grid. Amyntaio, Ptolemaida, and the former lignite zones have become one of the largest solar photovoltaic clusters in Europe.
The transformation doesn’t stop at solar panels. Battery storage stations with a combined capacity of 98 MW and 196 MWh have been completed in Ptolemaida and Meliti, while a new 50 MW/200 MWh unit is under construction in Amyntaio. Even more striking is the plan for Kardia: the old open-pit mine is set to be repurposed as the lower reservoir for a 320 MW pumped-storage hydropower project. A cavity created to extract energy from the earth is now being redesigned to store energy for whenever the grid needs it most.
Meanwhile, “Ptolemaida 5” is not disappearing from the energy map either. Following the end of its lignite-fired operation in 2026, the latest plans call for it to be converted first into a 295 MW open-cycle natural gas unit by end-2027, and subsequently into a 439 MW combined-cycle gas plant. In this way, a baseload lignite unit is being transformed into a flexible backup resource for a system that will increasingly depend on renewables and storage. This is where the third chapter begins.
Western Macedonia is no longer simply called upon to generate electricity and export it elsewhere. With the data center, PPC is attempting to bring a large, permanent energy consumer right next to its production assets — and to retain a greater share of the value created within the region itself. The goal is to simultaneously leverage the land, the energy infrastructure, and the electricity it generates. Yet this transition will not be measured in megawatts and billions of euros alone. PPC’s overall investment plan for Western Macedonia envisions up to 20,000 jobs during the construction phase and up to 2,000 permanent positions during operations — bringing the critical question back into sharp focus: how deeply will the new economy take root in the region? That is the real thread connecting all three chapters.
First, millions of tonnes of lignite were extracted from the ground and turned into electricity. Then, the same land began filling up with solar panels and storage systems. Now, a facility is being planned where megawatts will be converted into computing power. The place remains an energy hub. What is changing is the product it generates — and with it, the way value is created.
Originally published in MoneyPro by Parapolitika
