Europe faces local resistance to data center expansion despite push for digital sovereignty

Like coal-fired power plants and wind turbines, few people actually want a data center in their backyard. But they do want to use their services. As a global debate rages about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, there are also many local discussions about where exactly the data centers needed to train and run AI should be built.

This is currently a major issue in Europe, where many governments and companies have decided that they would prefer to store data in Europe rather than in the United States, which is the global leader in computing. But more digital sovereignty in Europe will mean more consumption of the continent's resources.

According to the German Ministry for Economic Affairs, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed, an average of between 0.4 and 4.4 liters (0.8 and 9.3 pints) of water is used to cool data centers, with the water either evaporating or being diverted back to tanks in a warmed state.

Massive water consumption

The summer that just ended was the hottest on record in Europe — in some areas, water use was restricted for residents, agriculture and even nuclear power plants. The summers are expected to get warmer, so many are wondering about the potential water consumption of data centers in the future.

They are also worried about the high electricity consumption of the centers. Fingrid, Finland's national grid operator, recently forecast that electricity consumption would rise by almost 40% if all projects with signed connection agreements were implemented in full.

This week, the European Commission announced a new scheme for data centers to increase transparency on their energy and water use. Those with a capacity of more than 500 kW will receive an efficiency grade that will also take into account their contribution to the grid, such as the reuse of waste heat. "Tripling our data center capacity cannot mean tripling the pressure on our grids, our water and our energy bills," said Teresa Ribera, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition.

Data centers in urban hubs and rural areas

Europe's most powerful data centers have primarily been built near the major cities of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin (FLAP-D) because of high connectivity, proximity to users and businesses, and well-established ecosystems with specialized engineers and secure supply chains.

However, according to a report by the investment group CBRE, the situation is changing as these markets face power and grid infrastructure constraints. New data centers are being built in the Dutch city of Groningen, Barcelona in Spain or the Belgian capital Brussels, as well as in more rural areas.

And as this happens, there are more and more protests taking place, both on and offline. Earlier this month, hundreds turned up for a protest in front of tech giant Google's offices in the Austrian city of Linz, demonstrating against its already advanced plans to build a data center in the small town of Kronstorf.

Earlier this month, bestselling Irish author Sally Rooney successfully led a campaign to overturn planning permission for a proposed data center in the village of Killala, arguing that it would breach national climate policy.

In central France, meanwhile, several elected officials in the village of Etrechet have resigned over Google's plans to build a massive data center, which, at full capacity, would require between 880 megawatts and 1.1 gigawatts of electricity or the equivalent of the total output of a nuclear power plant. Etrechet mayor Florence Laurent told the French daily Le Monde that she was resigning out of a "sense of powerlessness, since the village has no decision-making power" regarding the project.

Some operators of data centers argue that the facilities can be built in such a way that they save energy. A large data center currently being built in Marseille will reportedly use a cooling system that requires 30% less power and consumes no water.

Other data centers, in Scandinavia, for example, use waste heat from the servers and route it into district heating networks via heat exchangers and pumps.

This spring, the German energy company E.ON published the results of a survey that found nearly three-quarters of people would be more likely to welcome data centers near residential areas if they fed their waste heat into the heating network.

Data center operators also argue that the facilities can serve the public by connecting the batteries that usually provide backup power to local grids so that there is uninterrupted service in the event of power outages or at times of peak demand.

For proponents of building more data centers in Europe, the facilities not only contribute to the continent's digital sovereignty but also help to strengthen energy independence.

Monir Ghaedi contributed to this article, which was translated from German.