DUBLIN: Protests against data centres (DCs) continued across Europe last Saturday as citizens took to the streets to voice their concerns about the impact on society and the environment.
Some 2,000 people marched in Dublin, according to broadcaster RTE, and about 1,300 gathered in Helsinki, with demonstrations also held in several smaller towns in Finland, YLE television said.
Representatives from Stop Dirty Data Centres, a coalition of local democracy and climate protest groups, said they aimed to “halt the unchecked expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) DCs and prevent our democracy being taken hostage by big tech industry interests”.
Campaign groups from Scotland to Spain and France to Denmark joined the action calling for a moratorium to pause construction “until we, the people, have democratically decided what is needed to ensure AI and DCs serve people and the planet, not private greed”.
Last Saturday’s protests followed a demonstration in Amsterdam last Friday, when hundreds of protesters clashed with police at a Microsoft Corp DC, resulting in one arrest.
The global DC buildout has accelerated as technology companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure to run and train AI.
The speed of the expansion has alarmed communities concerned about demand for land and electricity, rising energy costs and whether they’ll see any economic benefits.
Ireland has drawn massive investment by US technology giants including Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google that turned the country into a major DC hub, one of Europe’s biggest.
DCs accounted for 23% of Ireland’s total metered electricity consumption in 2025, according to the official statistics agency.
Last Saturday, demonstrators marched to Google’s offices and to the parliament in Helsinki city centre, YLE reported.
Google in September announced its biggest-ever European investment worth €13bil (US$14.5bil) in Finland, expanding an existing DC and building two new ones.
About €80bil worth of server farms are in various stages of planning and construction in Finland, according to the Confederation of Finnish Industries.
Citizens in the Nordic country are increasingly souring on DCs after revelations that Google representatives had cleared woodland, stripped topsoil and built roads at one of the sites before an environmental impact assessment had been completed.
The company building the site is facing a criminal inquiry and the government is rolling out legislation to rein in the AI expansion.
The backlash in Europe echoes a growing outcry in the United States, where the proliferation of DCs became a key factor in this week’s midterm elections.
Voters in several states picked local officials who pledged to stop or pause construction. — Bloomberg
