27
votes
Data centres have become a dirty word and a political issue in much of the world – has Sweden made one we can all love?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/nov/12/datacentres-unpopular-sweden-ecodatacenter-falun
I’m all for this. I don’t have an inherent problem with data centers. I get that it’s a complex, touchy subject for many but my personal concerns with today’s data centers aren’t unsolvable:
These people are acting like it’s categorically impossible to build a data center without acting like a mustache-twirling cartoon villain. The lack of imagination, responsibility, and basic human empathy on display is staggering and needs to be condemned without condition. I hope to see many more examples, like this Swedish project, of how to do it right.
Love this quote! It’s sounds hyperbolic but probably literally true. Renewables are the way. I do have some concerns about the flammability of wood but given the clear amount of thoughtfulness these developers have, I’m sure they wouldn’t have overlooked fire safety.
I have spent a fair amount of time reading and learning about cross-laminated timber (CLT) in a professional capacity. The wood panels are so thick (3.5 inches/90mm at least) that they perform exceptionally well in a fire. As the wood chars it actually insulates the inner wood and slows down the progression of damage into the wood plate. Wood also doesn't lose its strength at high temperatures even if one face is burning. However, concrete, while it doesn't burn at high temperatures, it loses strength at high temperatures. So in many cases, CLT structures outperform concrete structures for how long they remain structural during a fire event. And with a fire suppression system the likelihood of a fire actually managing to do much damage to the timber structure is pretty low.
There's has been a lot of green washing in the past decade or two when it comes to cross-lamianted timber and other structural timber products. However when it comes to creating a structure and your choices are concrete vs engineered woods, the woods will probably win as long as your using wood sourced by train or land transit (as opposed to shipping wood from overseas). Lots of nuance to get lost it, but in this case where there's a big local timber industry, this seems like a phenomenal use case for CLT.
Interesting! Thank you. I read an article a while back about the wooden highrise they constructed in Skellefteå, and the article made the claim that it was actually more fire safe than traditional highrises, but it didn't go into the details about why that was so.
Of course! Happy to share. I know when I started some work related to engineered woods several years ago that was literally my first question, "is this stuff actually fire safe?" And it turns out that's a really common first question and concern. I wish articles would include that tid bit so people can walk away understanding that yeah, these buildings are safe rather than wondering about if they're a big tinderbox.
This is spot on. The issue isn’t with data centers. It’s due to poor regulation, building codes, and community alignment around data centers.
The public objected to data centers raising electricity prices, somehow the answer to that was also to let data centers become power plants. That’s insane.
There's also the problem that they represent a major source of inflation. Why is a video game console that cost $500 in 2020 now $900? Because data centers are hogging all the supply for chips.
The more datacenters being built, the more consumers are being priced out of tech products they want. Why should any of us be happy about that?
This is caused by being in too much of a hurry. Big Tech has been building huge data centers for at least twenty years and it wasn't an issue before. Google, at least, was making good progress on being carbon-neutral. They funded (and still fund, via investment and advance-purchase agreements) many alternative energy projects.
But due to the AI gold rush/arms race, now everyone including Google is in a huge hurry to build as many as they can, as quickly as possible. So they do whatever they can to reduce the time to build them, and sometimes that means natural gas turbines and taking old power plants out of retirement.
Data centers aren't fundamentally bad for the environment, because they run on electricity and their main inputs and outputs are immaterial. They can easily run on green energy and there are multiple ways to cool them. It's a much easier problem than converting the airline industry to use green energy (for example). Done right, it can also be better for the environment than farming.
Therefore, the goal of regulation should be to slow things down and do things the right way. For example, a stiff carbon tax on electricity used by data centers would encourage them to use green energy even if it takes longer, and to upgrade data centers currently using natural gas to something greener.
It's also true that data centers don't employ many workers once they're up and running. In a way, that could be seen as good, since it allows rural areas to stay rural, instead of turning into suburban sprawl. And because they're so profitable, they can be a good source of local tax revenue. That's a matter of governments negotiating good deals with tech companies in return for having permission to build.
It's easy to get people to oppose things, but it would be better to convince them that there can be local advantages to this trend. It requires smart negotiations to make sure the local community benefits rather than being taken advantage of.
But in an era of widespread skepticism and distrust, how can a community's government representatives gain the trust needed to do the negotiations? It requires the community to trust that they're both smart and honest.
The ungodly amount of money billionaires just dumped into the election trying to get their way is what really, really damages this. It's gotten so bad that I actually think some of the money backfired *cough*elonmusk*cough*, given the incredible degree to which losing candidates outspent their opponents.
You make plenty of good points about data centers and how the problem should be dealt with rationally, but none of that is going to happen until the billionaires-in-politics problem is well and truly solved. Until then, I think populist sentiment against them and any of the things they want will only get more and more toxic.
Right now, I'm inclined to supoort any and all efforts that slow down data center construction until it's slowed down enough that chip makers are forced to start selling reasonably priced consumer goods again.
Similarly there are small towns deeply suspicious of promises of economic investment due to being burned in the past, and even more suspicious of cash payouts to residents from these companies. Because they sure as hell won't be bribed.
It's rather obvious they don't know what to do when "throw money at it" isn't the answer, especially when they can't promise things like property values and economic growth.
It's not the local mayors (usually) who lack the trust, it's the companies.