So is the resistance

Power-hungry data centers are expanding in Europe. So is the resistance.

Activists are battling a vast Google data center in the Austrian countryside.

By Zia Weise

One sleepy village nestled in the foothills of the Alps may soon devour more electricity than all the households of Vienna.

It is all thanks to Google.

The American tech giant is building Austria’s first hyperscale data center on the outskirts of tiny Kronstorf, a two-hour drive from the capital. The site could eventually consume the equivalent of 7 percent of the country’s current power demand.

Growing resistance, however, may throw a wrench in the company’s ambitions. A band of local rebels — worried about the data center’s voracious appetite for energy and skeptical about a power grab by a U.S. tech behemoth — is battling to prevent expansion.

“We really want to give them a hard time,” said Harald Müllner, an IT specialist from nearby Linz, who co-founded a local alliance of scientists, artists and activists campaigning against the data center. “They need to see that the people are not happy with this.” 

Their protests and petitions against Google’s plans mirror trends across the Atlantic, where Democrats are seizing on a growing backlash against data centers ahead of this year’s U.S. midterm elections. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has taken the side of Big Tech, posting on Monday that communities opposing data centers will "end up being backwards and poor."

In Europe, activists are targeting projects in France and locals are protesting plans in Italy. In Ireland, where data centers already consume a fifth of all electricity, opponents have tried — and failed — to block construction in the courts.

But so far, European concerns about data centers have run up against governments anxious the continent is falling behind the U.S. and China in the artificial intelligence race. 

“We cannot call for greater European AI sovereignty while at the same time putting up ever-new obstacles that hinder the very infrastructure on which it is based,” said Elisabeth Zehetner, Austria’s energy state secretary, about demands for greater regulation of massive data centers like the one in Kronstorf. 

The European Union plans to triple its data center capacity by 2035. Brussels and national governments have vowed to tear down regulatory barriers to the AI boom, even while insisting it can be sustainable. 

The Austrian activists are skeptical. “A hyperscale data center isn’t sustainable by its very nature. It’s just so huge,” said Christina Gruber, a freshwater ecologist campaigning against the Kronstorf data center. 

“There are so many factors — the conversion of arable land, this extreme thirst for energy, the consumption of water,” she added. “And the much greater question hanging over it all is simply: ‘What for? Is it worth it?’” 

Of frogs and fish

When Müllner and Gruber pull up outside the vast construction site on a sizzling hot day in August, a steady stream of trucks exit the main gate, hauling debris dug up by a dozen excavators. 

Cranes loom over a half-finished server hall. Piles of metal panels, rebar and concrete tubes bake in the sun. Down the road, where the River Enns rushes toward the Danube, pump stations stand ready to extract cooling water for the new data center. 

Google’s name is nowhere to be found. The only hint the U.S. giant is responsible for the dust wafting across the nearby motorway is a small keep-out notice on the fence, framed in the company’s signature colors.

Yet, Google is everywhere. When construction began in April, regional politicians celebrated with a bundt cake, known locally as gugelhupf, renamed “Googlhupf” for the occasion. Locals call the woodland across from the construction site, which the company helped plant, the “Google forest”; a small pond by the entrance, an oversized puddle home to a handful of dragonflies and a lone frog, has been dubbed the “Google biotope.”

Google insists it’s taking steps to compensate for the environmental impact of the data center. The company will cover the facility’s roof in solar panels and set up a fund to improve the local river ecosystem, said Michiel Sallaets, Google’s European communications lead on technical infrastructure.  

“Greenwashing,” says Müllner, the activist.

They worry about the Enns, which will both provide cooling to the data center and receive the warmed-up wastewater. “Any warm water discharge alters the habitat and causes additional stress for the creatures living there,” Gruber said. 

Google insists there’s no reason for concern. “Independent expert reports from the permitting process also show that the data center’s impact on the temperature of the Enns River is negligible,” said Sallaets. 

What riles the activists is that, despite the potential effects, the data center didn’t need a comprehensive environmental impact assessment under current Austrian law. 

“We need a change in the law,” said Gruber. Building a wind turbine requires that environmental assessment while data centers are exempt, she pointed out.

Politicians on the left have seized on the Kronstorf case to demand the law is revamped. The center-left Social Democrats, part of Austria’s coalition government, now want to subject data centers to environmental impact assessments. They’re backed by the opposition Greens, but the center-right People’s Party running the energy ministry rejects more regulation. 

Google “went through all required processes,” said Sallaets. The company will “act as a good and transparent neighbour,” he added.

The project’s first stage projects a power demand of 150 megawatts per hour, rising to 500MW if Google decides to expand the facility. As data centers run around the clock, the site is expected to draw 1.31 terawatt-hours during the first stage, both the Austrian Power Grid and the Upper Austrian electricity network provider said.

That rises to 4.4TWh under expansion plans. All the households of Vienna, a city of 2 million people, use around 3.4TWh.

Unlike in the U.S., where many companies have built fossil-fuel-powered generators on site, the Kronstorf data center plugs into the national grid. Austria runs on almost 90 percent renewable power — a key reason Google picked this location, as the company aims to operate its data centers on clean electricity by 2030. 

But the activists worry that Austria’s renewable energy generation may not keep up. The country depends on hydropower, which is vulnerable to drought. During this dry summer, hydro production fell by up to a third. 

Given climate change, “that’s not going to improve,” said Müllner. “We're seeing a parallel trend where we're consuming more electricity and producing less.” 

Locals are also concerned the data center will push up electricity prices, as has happened in Ireland and the United States, said Gruber.

Higher prices are a risk if Austria doesn’t compensate for the data center’s energy needs with additional renewables, said Christoph Dolna-Gruber, an expert at the Austrian Energy Agency, which advises the government and power companies.

“When demand rises, but supply can't keep up, the price of electricity naturally goes up as well,” he said, cautioning that Austria’s close integration into the wider European energy market made it hard to say how much costs would rise. 

Despite connecting to Austria’s clean grid, the Kronstorf data center won’t be carbon-free: Google’s plans foresee the installation of massive diesel-powered generators to keep the data center running in case of a blackout. While power cuts are rare in Austria, such generators have to be switched on regularly for test runs, noted Dolna-Gruber. 

Ideally, the government should require data center operators to contribute to building out clean power generation, he added.

The Austrian energy and economy ministry said in a statement to POLITICO that the power grid can manage the new data center. "In principle," it added, "the expansion of data centers must go hand in hand with the expansion of renewable generation, high-capacity grids, storage, and flexibility."

Europe first

There’s another reason the Austrian activists oppose the Kronstorf data center: Google is an American company. 

If you were to run a Google search for where to build a data center in Austria, says Müllner, the outskirts of Kronstorf would rank as a top result: An even plain to build on, river water available to cool the site, and an enormous power substation just around the corner.

So why, he asks, wasn’t that at least handed to a European company? “The Americans take the best spots, and then we have to build power lines to less desirable locations,” said Müllner. “We’ve let them take that.” 

Google says its project will create around 100 jobs. But the activists insist that the data center will send profits back to the U.S. and won’t benefit the local economy. 

“They use our energy. But where the revenues go we simply don’t know,” said Müllner. 

The Austrian economy ministry insisted that companies like Google "can make an important contribution to the region through investments, contracts for local businesses, and high-performance cloud and AI infrastructure."

While questions about energy and the environment must be "carefully examined," the ministry added, a "blanket rejection of such projects is not justified."

Given construction in Kronstorf is well underway, Gruber believes that it’s unrealistic to try and stop the project entirely. She and Müllner are targeting the expansion — the second phase that would triple the data center’s energy consumption. 

She hopes their protest will serve as a warning to other U.S. tech giants. Already, campaigners are gearing up to fight against new projects in the country’s east. 

“One thing we’ve already achieved,” she said, “is that it won’t be so easy for those who come next.”