'Do we want fewer emissions or more Netflix?': Inside the fight against Europe's data centres

For six months, activists Max and Eda hit the streets of Marseille, France to find out more about the data centres they say are taking over the city’s downtown. 

Their activist group called the "Clouds Were Under Our Feet," claims the city can either power the five data centres taking over buildings around its famous port or electrify the bus network.

A document they posted online that appears to be from the city says the data centres compete with other projects in Marseille.

"We have to set our priorities: is it green energy projects to reduce our emissions, or is it more Netflix?" Eda said. Euronews Next reached out to the city of Marseille and EDF, France's national grid, but didn't receive an immediate reply.

Data centres hold networks of computers that store, process, and distribute large amounts of data. They also play a crucial role in the generative artificial intelligence (AI) boom because companies need these computers in order to train their new models. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that electricity consumption from data centres worldwide could double by 2026, from 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022 to more than 1,000 TWh: more than the entire energy consumption of Japan. 

Max and Eda, who agreed to speak to Euronews Next using pseudonyms to protect their privacy, are two of the many activists in Europe and the world who are increasingly taking on the use and construction of data centres in their cities. 

What is data centre activism?

Sebastián Lehuedé, a researcher and lecturer at Kings College London, said "data centre activism" is a movement that is starting to take shape as communities realise the impact that these centres will have on the environment. 

It’s being driven mostly by activists that fought for other rights or have connections to different groups, whether that’s climate justice or digital rights, he continued. 

Most groups are in Europe or Latin America, according to Lehuedé, but what their local movements cover is quite different. 

In Latin American hubs like Chile and Uruguay, the issue against data centres is always about water consumption, he said. 

Both countries are dealing with long-lasting droughts that are drying up reservoirs and causing shortages in their capital cities of Montevideo and Santiago. 

The issue in Europe, however, is around how much grid energy is going to data centres, he added. 

The EU estimates that just under 3 per cent of the continent’s total energy generation is going to data centres, according to a March announcement on their sustainability. 

Data centres consume much more energy in Ireland and the Netherlands, with 21 per cent and 5.4 per cent of the national grids respectively, according to a 2024 EU data centre energy consumption report.

Because the activist movements are typically small, Lehuedé said it’s hard to estimate how many people and communities might be fighting against data centres. 

Groups are working together in Latin America through information-sharing, he said, but to his knowledge are not forming any concrete movement across borders. 

Aurora Gómez Delgado, a Spanish activist, is fighting against Meta’s data centre expansion in Talavera de la Reina, a small town of just 83,000 people an hour west of Madrid. 

She said she’s been in touch with groups in Marseille and Latin America to talk about a broader movement. 

When did the activist movement start?

For Patrick Brodie, a lecturer at University College Dublin who studies the environmental politics of digital infrastructures, the issue stems back to 2015. 

That’s when Apple announced a €850 million plan to build a data centre in County Galway in Western Ireland that would sustain itself on renewable energy. 

The project was positive news for Ireland at first, Brodie said, but environmental engineer Allan Daly mounted a Supreme Court challenge against Apple, claiming that not enough was known about how renewables would be used for the plan to proceed. 

The Apple plan for Galway was eventually scrapped in 2018. 

Half a world away, Lehuedé encountered data centre activists in 2019, when his research on digital rights brought him to the community of Cerrillos outside of Chile’s capital city, Santiago. 

A few people in the neighbourhood had learned that the Google expansion that was supposed to be built there would use up already low water amounts and were furious about that plan, he continued. 

The next wave of data centre activism came around 2021, Lehuedé said, with the AI boom. That’s when a case in Zeewolde, Netherlands started to make headlines. 

After the local government initially approved a new Meta data centre in 2021, the Dutch senate quickly put the project on ice "until a new government vision for spatial planning and data centres is ready," local media reported.

Meta eventually abandoned the project in 2022.

Recently, activists have won a few more fights. In September, Google said it would rethink its plans in Chile because of the water issue concerns.

In August, Ireland's South Dublin County Council refused Google’s plans for another facility on the outskirts of the capital because the city doesn’t have enough energy to support it. 

Still, Lehuedé isn’t convinced that these stories are creating any real momentum for a wider movement. 

"It’s quite the opposite, actually," he said. "There’s more and more projects being built, and more governments that are jumping on the bandwagon to welcome them".

Governments 'playing catch-up'

Back in Marseille, data centre companies have to conduct environmental assessment reports and consult the public on their proposal, which the company Digital Realty is doing right now in Marseille for their MRS5 project, Eda said. 

A new law could change that, according to Max and Eda. 

Before France’s snap summer election, the government was working on a “simplification of business life” law that would designate data centres as projects of “major national interest,” like bridges or train stations, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.

"That is very frightening for us," Eda said. "If (the government) makes it a project of major national interest, they get to bypass all of this".    

Euronews Next reached out to the prime minister’s office to find out whether this law is still on the agenda but did not receive an immediate reply. 

Other activists, like Ireland’s Jerry Mac Evilly with the non-profit organisation Friends of the Earth and Spain’s Gómez Delgado, are calling for moratoriums in their countries on all data centre builds until there’s a robust plan to mandate them. 

To Mac Evilly, that looks like a plan that would put limits on data centres' energy consumption and have them invest significantly in onsite renewable energy "to reduce their dependence on the national grid". 

But to Lehuedé, moratoriums aren’t the answer. 

Instead, he wants to see Big Tech companies incorporate local perspectives from the beginning. 

"The local community has to have access to knowledge so they can educate themselves,” he said. 

"These projects are being built in a rush right now," because governments are essentially "playing catchup" to capitalise on the AI boom, he continued.