{"id":623581,"date":"2023-03-30T09:49:21","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T14:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/30\/these-angry-dutch-farmers-really-hate-microsoft\/"},"modified":"2023-03-30T09:49:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T14:49:21","slug":"these-angry-dutch-farmers-really-hate-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/30\/these-angry-dutch-farmers-really-hate-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"These Angry Dutch Farmers Really Hate Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As soon as<\/span> Lars Ruiter steps out of his car, he is confronted by a Microsoft security guard, who is already seething with anger. Ruiter, a local councillor, has parked in the rain outside a half-finished Microsoft data center that rises out of the flat North Holland farmland.\u00a0He wants to see the construction site.\u00a0The guard, who recognizes Ruiter from the last time he brought a TV crew here, says that\u2019s not allowed. Within minutes, the argument has escalated, and the guard has his hand around Ruiter\u2019s throat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The security guard lets go of Ruiter within a few seconds, and the councillor escapes with a red mark across\u00a0his neck. Back in his car, Ruiter insists he\u2019s fine. But his hands shake when he tries to change gears. He says the altercation\u2014which he will later report to the police\u2014shows the fog of secrecy that surrounds the Netherlands\u2019 expanding\u00a0data center<\/a>\u00a0business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe regret an interaction that took place outside our data center campus, apparently involving one of Microsoft\u2019s subcontractors,\u201d says Craig Cincotta, general manager at Microsoft, adding that the company would cooperate with the authorities.<\/p>\n

The heated exchange between Ruiter and Microsoft\u2019s security guard shows how contentious Big Tech\u2019s data centers have become in rural parts of the Netherlands. As the Dutch government sets strict environmental targets to cut emissions, industries are being forced to compete for space on Dutch farmland\u2014pitting big tech against the increasingly political population of Dutch farmers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are around 200 data centers in the Netherlands, most of them renting out server space to several different companies. But since 2015, the country has also witnessed the arrival of enormous \u201chyperscalers,\u201d buildings that generally span at least 10,000 square feet and are set up to service a single (usually American) tech giant. Lured here by the convergence of European internet cables, temperate climates, and an abundance of green energy, Microsoft and Google have built hyperscalers;\u00a0Meta has tried and failed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Against the backdrop of an intensifying Dutch nitrogen crisis, building these hyperscalers is becoming more controversial. Nitrogen, produced by cars, agriculture, and heavy machinery used in construction, can be a dangerous pollutant, damaging ecosystems and endangering people’s health. The Netherlands produces four times more nitrogen than the average across the EU. The Dutch government has pledged to halve emissions by 2030, partly by persuading farmers to reduce their livestock herds or leave the industry altogether. Farmers have responded with protests, blockading roads with tractors and manure and dumping slurry outside the nature minister\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

The courts have also halted thousands of building projects\u2014forcing construction jobs like Microsoft\u2019s to apply for permits proving they would not make the nitrogen crisis worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Microsoft\u2019s newest data center has yet to receive those permits. The local environment agency told WIRED it is still assessing the company\u2019s paperwork. In a system where farmers and house developers\u2019 projects have stalled as they wait for nitrogen permits, there\u2019s a sense that Microsoft has jumped the queue. \u201cThey don’t have the right permission to build,\u201d says Ruiter, who represents the municipality of Hollands Kroon. To him, it is a double standard to let Microsoft keep building while other construction work has been put on hold. \u201cWhen farmers don’t have the permission to build a farm, they will not build the farm. Microsoft doesn’t have the right permission to build a data center, but they already got started building the data center.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Eoin Doherty, Microsoft\u2019s EMEA data center lead,\u00a0denies the company is building in North Holland without permission. The company was issued a \u201ctolerance decision\u201d by the local authority, he says. This means Microsoft can continue building at its own risk while it waits for a final permit.<\/p>\n

The dispute over nitrogen permits has put Microsoft\u2019s data center developments in direct opposition to an increasingly powerful farming community. Earlier this month, a new political force, called the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB), did so well in provincial elections, it became the joint-largest party in the Dutch Senate. The party, which emerged in response to the nitrogen crisis, also has strong views on data centers. \u201cWe think the data center is unnecessary,\u201d says Ingrid de Sain, farmer turned party leader of the BBB in North Holland, referring to the Microsoft complex. \u201cIt is a waste of fertile soil to put the data centers boxes here. The BBB is against this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are three hyperscale data centers in the Netherlands. Microsoft runs two of them here in the municipality of Hollands Kroon\u2014one completed and one still under construction. From the outside, these enormous buildings look like airport hangars without the runway, squatting in the fields next to industrial parks or fluorescent pink greenhouses. Although\u00a0the Dutch government\u00a0introduced<\/a> new rules in June restricting new hyperscalers from being built in much of the country, Microsoft\u2019s half-finished Hollands Kroon site was granted an exemption. The government said there was enough space and local green energy to accommodate it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that did not ease anxiety amongst the public that traditional farmland was being replaced with huge, unsightly data centers. \u201cThere’s a lot of criticism about how the landscape is changing,\u201d says\u00a0Jeroen Candel, associate professor of food and agricultural policy at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University. \u201cThe Netherlands is a flat country, and we cherish our meadows and our traditional polders [lowland reclaimed from the sea].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a climate where industries are bickering about who is and isn\u2019t allowed to create nitrogen emissions, farmers groups argue that priority should be given\u00a0to the farmers, whose operations they say were made illegal overnight by a 2019 change in nitrogen rules. \u201cOnly after these agricultural entrepreneurs are legalized can they use freed-up nitrogen space for the construction of data centers or anything else for that matter,\u201d says Job Knobbout, spokesperson for the Netherlands Agricultural and Horticultural Association (LTO).<\/p>\n

Opposition to datacenter development is growing, in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. When Meta proposed building the Netherlands\u2019 biggest data center yet in the municipality of Zeewolde, locals\u00a0rallied against the project<\/a> until the whole plan was called off. Farmers were influential in this debate as well. \u201cWith Zeewolde, in particular, the data center would have taken away land that was actually being rented out by the government to farmers, to give that to a multinational company,\u201d says Karin van Es, associate professor of media studies at Utrecht University, who has studied the data center debate. \u201cSo that created a lot of tension.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the Netherlands is not the only country with hyperscalers. Ireland has five, while Germany and Denmark both have four, according to research by the Dutch Data Center Association.<\/p>\n

Campaigners in Ireland are fighting Amazon’s plans to build three new data centers in North Dublin, arguing that the buildings\u2019 demand for power would overload the electricity grid. Germany has proposed a\u00a0law<\/a> that would force tech companies to reuse the heat generated by their data centers. And this week, one of Europe\u2019s largest ammunition manufacturers, Norway\u2019s Nammo,\u00a0said<\/a> the company was struggling to meet demand from the Ukraine war because a new TikTok data center was using up the region\u2019s spare electricity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back in Hollands Kroon, data centers are both personal and political for Ruiter.\u00a0One of Microsoft\u2019s data center complexes now occupies a field where his grandfather used to grow potatoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The councillor has made these giant hyperscalers the defining issue of his political career.\u00a0Ruiter was kicked out of the ruling Conservative VVD party for publicly criticizing the secrecy surrounding his party\u2019s deals with local data centers. He now represents the smaller Independent Dutch Crown (OHK) party instead, although he remains a VVD member.<\/p>\n

Ruiter says he\u2019s continued to talk about data centers because he wants to remind people that \u201cthe cloud\u201d they\u2019ve come to rely on isn\u2019t just an ethereal concept\u2014it\u2019s something that has a physical manifestation, here in the farmland of North Holland. He worries that growing demand for data storage from people, and\u00a0also, increasingly, AI<\/a>, will just mean more and more hyperscale facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, we need some data centers,\u201d he says. But he wants us to talk about restructuring the way the internet works so they are not so necessary. \u201cWe should be having the philosophical debate of what do we do with all our data? I don\u2019t think we need to store everything online in a central place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Morgan Meaker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As soon as Lars Ruiter steps out of his car, he is confronted by a Microsoft security guard, who is already seething with anger. Ruiter, a local councillor, has parked in the rain outside a half-finished Microsoft data center that rises out of the flat North Holland farmland.\u00a0He wants to see the construction site.\u00a0The guard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":623582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1269,46,43],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-623581","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-angry","8":"category-technology","9":"category-these"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}