00:00Topics in Austria, hundreds of worried citizens are regularly taken to the streets to protest against new data centres.
00:06Protesters are calling for more thorough environmental impact assessments and greater public involvement in the approval of data centres.
00:14Across Europe, people are pushing back against the spread of energy-hungry data centres, warning of the environmental costs.
00:23Around 50 server farms are currently operating in Austria, with at least five more under construction.
00:30They include a hyperscale facility in Upper Austria, with a plant power supply capacity of up to 500 megawatts, plus
00:38several smaller facilities around Vienna.
00:40While the European Union wants to triple its data centres' capacities to keep Europe competitive in the global AI race,
00:48environmentalists argue that scarce energy resources should be prioritised for essential industries rather than consumed by energy-intensive AI applications
00:59with less tangible benefits for society.
01:02So far, they will continue taking to the streets in an effort to stop new data centre projects.
