Around 400 residents of Kronstorf, a town of 3,500 in Austria, protested earlier this month outside the Upper Austrian regional government headquarters in Linz against Google's planned data centre. The facility covers about 50 hectares — around 70 football pitches — and construction began in April, with the first phase expected to become operational next year.
The demonstration reflects growing unease about a project that residents say has moved forward with little transparency and few answers about water use, cooling systems, and the impact on the River Enns. "I believe we need a rethink when it comes to this endless growth and expansion," said Christina Gruber, an organiser of the protest, freelance artist and aquatic ecologist. Andrea Kollmann, a 53-year-old lawyer who travelled from Vienna for the protest, said the project had advanced "much too quickly" and that "everything is extremely non-transparent, nobody knows anything."
The Energy and Water Cost
The first phase alone could consume up to 1.31 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to media reports — equivalent to roughly the annual consumption of 375,000 households. While Google said its data centres are among the most energy-efficient in the world, critics argued that even highly efficient facilities can consume vast amounts of electricity and water. Those concerns aren't abstract. They're rooted in the scale of infrastructure being built to support cloud and AI services that most Europeans now depend on but have little say over.
Google said the centre will support growing demand for cloud and AI services, create around 100 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs, help strengthen Austria's digital infrastructure and contribute to local sustainability initiatives. At the groundbreaking ceremony attended by politicians and company representatives, Thomas Stelzer, the governor of Upper Austria, said the centre would send "a strong signal for Upper Austria as a business and innovation location."
A Pattern Across Europe
Kronstorf isn't alone. Europe is already home to hundreds of data centres while it lags far behind the United States in capacity, and the growing number of proposed facilities has triggered protests over environmental impact. Earlier in September, Scotland halted new hyperscale AI data centre approvals amid environmental concerns. In Spain, residents of the Aragon region have launched legal action against a massive data centre buildout by Amazon. Amsterdam has imposed a moratorium on new data centres over space and power concerns, while Denmark has moved data centres to the bottom of its priority list for grid connections, warning of strain on its power grid.
Francesca Musiani, an internet specialist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said protests have exposed "tension between this rapid expansion of AI and climate objectives" and raised broader questions about digital governance in Europe. She added, "For me, this is part of what sovereignty should mean in practice: the capacity of different levels of society to participate in shaping the infrastructures on which they depend."
Why This Matters:
The protests in Kronstorf expose a fundamental tension in Europe's digital transition: who decides where the infrastructure goes, and who bears the environmental cost? Google's data centre will power services millions rely on, but it'll consume as much electricity as a mid-sized city — in a region where residents say they weren't meaningfully consulted. This isn't just a local planning dispute. It's a question of democratic accountability in an age when tech giants build continent-scale infrastructure faster than governments can regulate it. If Europe is serious about digital sovereignty and climate targets, it needs frameworks that give communities a voice before construction begins — not after. The alternative is a patchwork of resistance, moratoriums, and legal battles that slow the transition without improving it.