Campaigners against datacenter expansion are planning two days of coordinated action across Europe on November 6 and 7, demanding an immediate moratorium on new large-scale developments.
Following the US midterm elections, where restrictions on massive AI server farms were prominent in the campaigns from candidates in both major parties, it's now Europe's turn. Over 100 groups across 15 European countries will protest the boom in bit barn building over the next couple of days.
As well as demonstrations, there will be public meetings, stalls, petitions, walking tours, cycle rides, poetry readings and other creative actions, the organizers say.
The coalition of groups has put up a website – stopdirtydatacentres.eu – with an interactive map allowing anyone to find information on the events taking place and where.
In the UK, there is a photocall planned at 8am on November 6 outside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in Whitehall Place in central London, but also a Community Day of Action the following day at London's Brick Lane, where a facility is planned on the site of the former Truman Brewery.
Also on November 7, there will be a "family event" at St Michaels & All Angels Church in Great Torrington, Devon, to highlight the massive 1.5 GW data campus and on-site battery energy storage that is planned for 850 acres of farmland near the town.
The planned actions are a response to growing concerns about the impact of the wave of new compute shed projects on local communities, public infrastructure, land, water and energy use, housing, jobs and the cost of living.
Such concerns won't have been helped by recent events, such as a Google subsidiary reportedly felling 250,000 trees illegally in Finland to clear the ground for a server hall.
The campaigners claim that governments, the European Union and the tech giants are gambling with the future by racing ahead with server farm developments without proper scrutiny of the environmental, democratic and social impacts they might have.
A recent report found that businesses and private-sector trade associations dominated meetings with UK ministers to discuss datacenters, while environmental groups didn't get a look-in.
Campaigners are calling for an immediate moratorium on new large-scale projects across Europe, until clear frameworks are in place to determine whether new facilities should be built and under what conditions, with proper scrutiny and meaningful public participation.
"Datacenter developers in the UK and Europe want to cash in on the AI goldrush whatever the consequences. But communities everywhere are fighting back, seeing through Big Tech's PR machine and calling this what it is – a massive grab of scarce land, water and power resources by Silicon Valley billionaires," said Oliver Hayes, Head of Campaigns at Global Action Plan (UK).
"With governments failing to answer very basic questions about how many datacenters we need, what for, where, and how pollution will be avoided, the only reasonable course of action is an immediate moratorium," he said in a supplied remark.
They are unlikely to get much sympathy from the British government, which has pegged its hopes for economic growth on AI and wants more bit barns built to fulfil this. It has already used its powers to overturn rejections of planning permission for server farm projects by local councils.
Omdia analyst Alan Howard argues that datacenters also became a convenient political target during the US campaigns.
"The datacenter industry took a big hit in the US midterm elections which is quite disappointing, but not that surprising," Howard told The Register.
"The anti-datacenter rhetoric accelerated 12 months ago and in the last six months skyrocketed. While there have been many catalysts to point our fingers at, datacenters turned into an opportunistic political football. To be blunt, there is no shortage of politicians willing to exploit any opportunity to win an election and the datacenter 'problem' showed up just at the right time for this election."
Planned actions across Europe include events in Ireland, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and the UK. A march to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh is also pegged for the following weekend, November 14. ®