Protesters storm Microsoft AI data center construction site
A Microsoft data center under construction in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has been overrun by about a hundred protesters, with some carrying placards saying, Screw your data center." According to Reuters, the Stop Dirty Data Centers" coalition is planning actions across 16 countries on November 6 and 7, 2026, including Amsterdam, Dublin, Warsaw, and another Microsoft site in Denmark.
Go deeper with TH Premium: AI and data centers
- The data center cooling state of play
- The custom AI ASIC state of play
- America's AI chip rules keep changing - and the rest of the world is paying the price
- GTC 2026: Ian Buck press Q&A transcript - VP of Hyperscale and HPC speaks out on shelving CPX and shipping LPU decode this year
- Demand for data center CPUs has surged, and AI agents are responsible
Pure Data Centers, which owns the Amsterdam data center, said, We respectfully ask those on site to leave safely and engage with us in dialogue about the development and any concerns they may have." The report also quoted Microsoft saying that it understood the strong feeling that people have and respected their right to peaceful expression but says that it does not condone any unlawful action.
"On 6-7 November 2026 we are taking action across Europe to say Stop Dirty Data Centres," the group's website reads. "Local communities are rising up to stop dirty data centres where they live. We will unite and exercise our democratic rights to speak out, assemble, and protest to hold elected officials to account. We're calling for an immediate moratorium on large data centres in Europe!" A map on the site shows actions planned at 85 locations across Europe over the coming days.
The group cited a list of concerns about "the explosion of AI data centres across our towns and cities," and claims to be joining to prevent "the irreparable harms data centres pose to the wellbeing of people and planet." They cite local communities, jobs, housing shortages and rising energy bills, the climate crisis, heatwaves and water shortages, big tech undermining democracies, the mental health crisis, increased surveillance and the erosion of privacy, securitization and militarization, and a toxic supply chain as motivations.
Data center opposition is one of the issues that has taken center stage in the U.S. midterm elections, with Americans overwhelmingly voting against them. It seems that resistance isn't limited to the United States, though, as European countries take measures to limit their unlimited development. For example, Google has been hit with a criminal probe after its Finnish subsidiary, Tuike Finland Oy, allegedly destroyed 816 acres of forest without a permit. Denmark has also hit the brakes on data center grid connection requests as total applications exceed 60GW, more than eight times the country's current peak power consumption. One Italian council also a 200% tax on data center development in agricultural land to encourage developers to reuse old industrial areas instead.
The Stop Data Center coalition claims that it isn't against progress or that it wants to close down existing projects. Instead, it wants AI data center construction to be held until governments have established clearer rules on their development so that they do not have leave a negative impact on the environment and the people living around them. AI, of course, is a super important technology and we need to have our own capacity," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen told the publication. But she also added that it's very important for citizens that they can trust that their energy bills are not skyrocketing and there are not electricity blackouts because of data centers, or they are not destroying the environment with these projects."