Call for a Construction Halt
Protest Against Google’s Large Data Center
“Data center? No, thanks!” Activists displayed a banner with these words in all caps on the building of the Google data center in Kronstorf, Upper Austria, which they climbed onto Sunday morning for their protest. About 15 people took part, some of whom waved smoke flares.
Kronen Zeitung als bevorzugte Google-Quelle hinzufügen Opponents of the data center’s expansion also demanded a “halt to construction now.” Critics of globalization from the NGO Attac supported the protest. Opponents decry the project’s “absurd land and energy consumption” and are also concerned about rising electricity prices. Specifically, they are seeking to prevent the second phase of expansion for the Google data center in Kronstorf. At the end of July, applications for commercial zoning permits were submitted to the municipality and the district administration. The so-called Google Campus is to be built on a total area of 50 hectares of industrial land that the U.S. IT giant acquired years ago.
Disclosure of Construction Plans
According to a press release, the “No Thanks to Data Centers” activists—supported by Attac—are demanding not only an immediate halt to construction of all planned data centers in Austria but also the disclosure of the construction plans and the intended use of the data centers. They argue that no training in military or surveillance technologies should take place there. In times of a “climate catastrophe,” they argue, we certainly cannot afford “‘hyperscalers’ with their absurd consumption of energy and land.” “Hyperscalers” are large providers of cloud computing and data storage services.
“Rapid technological development must not lead to even more digital surveillance, polarization, speculation, and resource consumption,” said David Walch of Attac. “Digital infrastructure must be understood as a public common good and democratically controlled.” For this reason, he added, the data center in Kronstorf must be stopped. Critics view the high electricity consumption as just as problematic as the high cooling water requirements of large data centers.
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