Austrian town residents protest against Google's massive data centre project

Residents of a small Austrian town are taking on Google over plans for a data centre the size of around 70 football pitches.

Around 400 people protested against the planned 50-hectare complex earlier this month outside the headquarters of the Upper Austrian regional government in Linz.

Kronstorf, where the data centre is being built, has around 3,500 inhabitants.

Construction works on Google's first data centre in Austria began in April, with the first phase expected to become operational in 2027.

The US tech giant says the centre will support growing demand for cloud and AI services, create around 100 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs, help strengthen Austria's digital infrastructure, and contribute to local sustainability initiatives.

At the groundbreaking ceremony attended by politicians and company representatives, Thomas Stelzer, the governor of Upper Austria, said the centre would send "a strong signal for Upper Austria as a business and innovation location".

However, residents are concerned about a lack of transparency around the project and unanswered questions about the cooling systems, water use and their impact on the River Enns.

"I believe we need a rethink when it comes to this endless growth and expansion," said Christina Gruber, an organiser of the protest, freelance artist and aquatic ecologist.

Andrea Kollmann, a 53-year-old lawyer, travelled from Vienna for the protest. Kollmann said the project had advanced "much too quickly" and that "everything is extremely non-transparent, nobody knows anything".

Google says its data centres are among the most energy-efficient in the world, but critics argue that even highly efficient facilities can consume vast amounts of electricity and water.

Data centres contain thousands of servers packed with computing chips that run around the clock, drawing large amounts of electricity and generating heat that cooling systems, often using water, must remove.

In Kronstorf, the first phase alone could consume up to 1.31 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to media reports, equivalent to roughly the annual consumption of 375,000 households.

Growing number of data centres in Europe

Europe is already home to hundreds of data centres across the continent while it lags far behind the United States in data centre capacity.

As the continent races to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure, the growing number of proposed data centres has also triggered protests over their environmental impact.

Earlier in September, Scotland halted new hyperscale AI data centre approvals amid environmental concerns.

In Spain, residents of the Aragon region have launched legal action against a massive data centre buildout by Amazon, while the Dutch city of Amsterdam has imposed a moratorium on construction of new data centres over space and power concerns.

Denmark has moved data centres to the bottom of its priority list for grid connections, warning of the strain on its power grid.

Protests have exposed "tension between this rapid expansion of AI and climate objectives" and raised broader questions about digital governance in Europe, according to Francesca Musiani, an internet specialist at the French National Center for Scientific Research.

"For me, this is part of what sovereignty should mean in practice: the capacity of different levels of society to participate in shaping the infrastructures on which they depend."