Austria's data center boom meets growing protests over energy use

Europe is facing growing resistance to data center construction as communities fear soaring electricity demand and environmental damage. In Austria, hundreds of worried citizens are regularly taking to the streets to protest against new server farms.

"Data centers are a massive problem for the climate crisis. They make every problem that we have already worse," Hannah Keller, an environmentalist working for the Austrian NGO Global 2000, told CGTN.

"They use ginormous amounts of water, they have incredibly high energy demands, and we just don't have enough renewable energy to fill that," added Keller.

For months, the 32-year-old environmentalist has been calling for a halt to new server farm construction in Austria. She wants more thorough environmental impact assessments and greater public involvement

Renewable energy first

Across Europe, protesters are pushing back against the spread of energy-hungry data centers, warning of possible environmental costs. In Ireland, these facilities already consume almost a quarter of the country’s electricity — and here in Austria, critics warn of a similar future as more data centers spring up.

"I'm actually half-Irish and we don't want the same problems that are occurring in Ireland in Austria as well," Fridays For Future activist Emma Reynolds says during a protest in Vienna. "We need to expand our renewable energy first and then we can debate if we actually need data centers."

Around 50 server farms are currently operating in Austria, with at least five more under construction. They include a hyperscale facility in Upper Austria with a planned power supply capacity of up to 500 megawatts plus several smaller facilities around Vienna.

"Of course we do understand people that are critical of every construction and of data centers. But data is the raw material of our digital society, of our digital age," says Stefan Ebenberger, Secretary General of Internet Service Providers Austria.

"There is a demand for electricity but this demand for electricity is already calculated in the project phase in cooperation with the grid operator, with the power supplies," he adds.

Environmental impact assessments

The representative of Austria's internet industry says regulations are causing excessive delays to new projects. Most recently, the government announced mandatory environmental impact assessments for new data centers with a capacity exceeding 100 megawatts.

"We need to reduce the time frame it needs to start and finalize projects of this size and of this importance, but always taking into account and well-balancing sustainability, environment and other rights," Ebenberger says.

While the European Union wants to triple its data-center capacity to keep Europe competitive in the global AI race, environmentalists like Keller and Reynolds argue that scarce energy resources should be prioritized for essential industries, rather than consumed by energy-intensive AI applications with less tangible benefits for society.

They will continue taking to the streets in an effort to stop new projects.