Vatican approves $117 million agrivoltaic plant to become first carbon-neutral state

September 3, 2026 at 02:01 PM2 min

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The Vatican has approved a €100 million ($117 million) agrivoltaic plant to power the microstate and become the world's first carbon-neutral state. The plant will be built on the Santa Maria di Galeria estate outside Rome and is expected to be operational within two years.

Key Facts

The Vatican will invest €100 million ($117 million) in an agrivoltaic plant expected to power the microstate within two years.
The plant will be built on the 1,050-to-1,100-acre Santa Maria di Galeria estate outside Rome, with an expected capacity of 80 to 90 megawatts.
Vatican City covers about 44 hectares (109 acres) and is home to roughly 800 residents and nearly 3,000 commuting lay workers.
Pope Francis first ordered the carbon-neutral plan in 2024, and Pope Leo has spent the past year moving it through bureaucratic steps.

The Agrivoltaic Project

The Vatican's plan puts roughly €100 million ($117 million) toward an agrivoltaic plant expected to power the microstate within two years. The plant will be built on the Santa Maria di Galeria estate, which covers about 1,050 to 1,100 acres outside Rome. The site is expected to generate 80 to 90 megawatts of capacity, roughly a dozen times less power than OpenAI's Stargate data center campus in Abilene, Texas, which is built to support 1.2 gigawatts of AI computing. Pope Francis first ordered the plan in 2024, and Pope Leo has spent the past year moving it through bureaucratic steps by creating a foundation, a memorandum with an Italian utility, and a joint commission.

Scale and Context

Vatican City is roughly an eighth the size of Central Park and smaller than Meta's Hyperion data center project in Louisiana, which is on track to draw as much as 5 gigawatts of power by 2030. The Vatican is home to roughly 800 residents and nearly 3,000 commuting lay workers, making it the smallest country on Earth by a wide margin. A single large AI data center now consumes as much electricity as a city of 80,000 people, according to Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla. Data centers accounted for roughly half of all new U.S. electricity demand in 2025, and global data center electricity use is projected to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours.