00:00Zaragoza. The Romans and the Moors settled here. These days it's the Americans.
00:06Except they're not building churches or palaces, but giant industrial plants.
00:11The local government here is beyond excited.
00:15This is good news, very important good news.
00:19This past year has brought more investment than any other year before.
00:25Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and some others want to invest more than 30 billion euros
00:31in a region that is otherwise known for agriculture and some logistics hubs.
00:36But why?
00:38In order to get cheap electricity it's best to use renewables like wind and solar.
00:43And here we have both wind and solar and lots of buildable space.
00:47And we're also easy to reach.
00:52Even though the server farms indeed use a lot of electricity,
00:55government and businesses here are seeing many advantages for the region,
00:59not least with regards to the job market.
01:03What we're really getting is investment, bringing high quality well-paid jobs.
01:10One example, Origen in Zaragoza.
01:13Their startup helps clients optimize business structures with the help of AI.
01:18They're also in the field of genetic analysis.
01:21For all that, the company is relying heavily on Amazon's servers.
01:28For genetic analysis, every person has 200 gigabyte of information.
01:32Now to compare one person's DNA to others,
01:35we need to compare their 200 gigabytes with lots of other 200 gigabytes.
01:40And that takes a lot of storage.
01:43Companies like Origen are expanding and creating jobs.
01:47Likely many more than all the data centers in the area themselves.
01:51Those, once built, employ very little personnel,
01:54especially when compared to the massive investment.
01:58This recent meeting on Zaragoza's new business was organized by an environmental group.
02:03They had tried to peek behind the curtain, a difficult undertaking,
02:07as the American companies are extremely secretive.
02:11And for good reason.
02:13According to a local tax expert, they barely pay any taxes in the region.
02:17A fact that shocked attendees.
02:23We don't know what's really coming at us.
02:28I don't think the politicians know what all this means for us.
02:35There are many unanswered questions.
02:38How much water does the server farm need to cool their servers?
02:41What does it mean for agriculture in the region?
02:47These recent measures here are shameful.
02:50Instead of letting farmers do their job,
02:53the government is now telling them that they have to ration water.
02:57And how to do it?
03:05The environmental group wants to better inform the public
03:08about the cloud businesses set up in their neighborhood
03:11and what side effects they might have.
