Residents across Denmark oppose planned data centres

Local opposition to data centre projects is growing across Denmark, with residents in several communities raising concerns and a new national movement forming, DR reports.

In Tinghøj, a village of about 200 people north of Varde, residents fear plans for a Microsoft data centre made up of five halls, each 500 metres long and 32 metres high, not including chimneys. The project is still at the planning stage.

“We are just ordinary people, and now a UFO is landing in our backyard,” said Jeanette Lund, who is part of a local dialogue group set up with the involvement of Varde Municipality. She said residents were angry, distressed and deeply uneasy about the plans.

Lund said she and her husband would move if the project goes ahead. Residents have put up homes-for-sale signs, gathered at municipal council meetings and placed lights outside the town hall in quiet protest.

Protests spread to other communities

Karina Tyron Sahner, who lives outside Nakskov on Lolland, is also concerned. Two large data centres are planned in the area, one with a capacity of one gigawatt. Denmark’s maximum electricity consumption is seven gigawatts, according to Energinet.

Sahner said residents felt the municipality trusted information from the project developers while treating local critics as “moaners”. She is worried about the facilities’ power consumption and said unanswered questions have left her feeling misled.

A citizen proposal she submitted last week, titled “No to data centres on Lolland”, has already received enough signatures to require the municipal council to consider it.

In Tølløse, south of Holbæk, Marianne Nielsen has signed a similar proposal opposing a planned data centre. Nearly 1,000 other people in the municipality had also signed it at the time DR reported. Nielsen said the plans needed more consideration and that decisions about where data centres should be built and what they should be used for should be discussed nationally.

A national movement takes shape

The proposal in Holbæk was put forward by the local climate association Ét Grønt Holbæk and was on the municipal council’s agenda that evening. Its spokesperson, Søren Bak Sommer, said what began as a local issue had attracted attention from members of parliament and residents elsewhere who are also facing data centre plans.

Bak Sommer is now a spokesperson for the newly founded People’s Movement Against Data Centres.