La Pólvora Submits Consulta de Pertinencia to Chile's SEA
DCI Partners has formally submitted a Consulta de Pertinencia to Chile’s Servicio de Evaluación Ambiental (SEA) for Data Center La Pólvora — the first regulatory checkpoint in the project’s environmental review pathway and a critical step toward full construction permitting for the Valparaíso Region facility.
What Is a Consulta de Pertinencia?
The Consulta de Pertinencia is the formal mechanism through which a project developer asks Chile’s environmental authority to determine whether the project must enter the Sistema de Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental (SEIA) process, and if so, whether it requires a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or a simpler Declaration of Environmental Impact (DIA). The SEA’s ruling on this submission is a required precondition before the project can advance through Chile’s permitting framework. Receiving this determination marks a meaningful milestone in the development timeline.
Data Center La Pólvora is a 74.4 MW IT capacity development located in the Valparaíso Region, on a 12.8-acre (5.2 ha) site 600 meters from the La Pólvora electrical substation. The project is positioned along Ruta 60, with multiple international trunk fiber systems passing directly in front of the site. The facility is designed to serve the growing demand for institutional-grade data center capacity from hyperscale cloud providers, AI workload operators, and enterprise clients across Latin America.
Connectivity and Market Position
Data Center La Pólvora holds a unique connectivity position in the Chilean market. The site’s proximity to the Curie submarine cable landing — Google’s trans-Pacific system — gives it the lowest latency connection to the United States and west coast international markets of any data center in Chile. The incoming Humboldt cable, expected to land in Chile by 2027, will further strengthen this advantage and position La Pólvora as one of the best internationally connected data center campuses in Latin America. The Valparaíso Region is Chile’s second-largest population center, home to more than one million people and three of the country’s top ten universities. The region’s coastal climate is also significantly milder than Santiago, enabling greater hours of free cooling per year — a direct operational and cost advantage over metropolitan alternatives.
First regulatory submission complete — Consulta de Pertinencia filed with the SEA
74.4 MW IT capacity | 12.8 acres | 600m from La Pólvora Substation
Closest Chilean data center to the Curie (Google) trans-Pacific cable landing
What’s Next
Following the SEA’s ruling on the Consulta de Pertinencia, DCI Partners will advance through the appropriate environmental pathway — initiating either the full EIA process or a DIA submission — with the goal of securing environmental approval and moving toward construction permitting. DCI Partners will continue to provide updates on La Pólvora’s regulatory progress. For partnership or leasing inquiries, contact info@dci-partners.com.