[HN Gopher] Facebook owner Meta suspends Netherlands data center...
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Facebook owner Meta suspends Netherlands data center due to
political pushback
Author : belter
Score : 68 points
Date : 2022-03-30 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| If Meta were to build enough new, carbon neutral, and green
| energy facilities to supply triple the energy costs of their
| facility and sell the remainder to the grid, I don't think anyone
| would have much of a problem with the facility.
|
| As it stands, the data centre will use up much of the green
| energy that NL has created over the past few years, purely for
| Facebook to... sell more ads. That's not palatable.
| hankman86 wrote:
| Data centers are a necessity that I can accept if the services
| they host offer any utility. Facebook does not. It's a net
| negative for its users and society at large.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I'd like to recommend the wired article from Jan 22 for
| understanding why Facebook is getting so much pushback -
| https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-dutch-data-center/
| stingraycharles wrote:
| As a Dutch person, one of my biggest concerns with this
| datacenter is its green energy usage; from what I understand,
| it's going to use up a huge portion of all the green energy we
| managed to build the last years. The datacenter is huge: 166
| hectares.
|
| To me, if that concern is addressed, I would be ok with it (a
| more suitable location would be nice though), and planting a few
| extra trees is not going to cut it.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| What's the point of developing green energy if not to use it?
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| The point is to use it for existing energy consumption, and
| only then start increasing energy consumption. If you add X
| GW of green energy to your Y GW of non-green energy, and then
| increase your usage by X, then the impact on the planet is
| the same as the status quo, i.e. not good.
| eunos wrote:
| Levy more tax and use it to expand more green energy.
| lmc wrote:
| Or, quit Facebook and avoid needing to use any natural
| resources at all.
| contravariant wrote:
| That's going to be tricky until we invent windmills powered
| by hot air.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Almost the entirety of Flevolands windmills would be used to
| power this beast, if not more.
| Bellend wrote:
| The tree planting thing is embarrassing. That needs shot down
| and it can't be used by any corporate body as a green
| credential surely!
| holoduke wrote:
| Good thing. We don't need those (ugly power eating useless
| purpose) big buildings in our garden. If it were datacenters to
| cure cancer or something else meaningful then ok. But it's
| Facebook.
| belval wrote:
| I get the sentiment, but it's not like the Netherlands don't
| use Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp. There needs to be a data
| center to address those requests and it will be built
| somewhere. The NIMBY attitude is not really productive.
|
| Compare the DC to a landfill. Do you want one in "your garden"?
| Probably not, but it's not like you are going to convert to
| zero waste and render the project irrelevant.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The Netherlands are one of the most densely settled areas in
| Europe and particularly prone to floods. Better to build a
| datacenter somewhere in Germany or France's rural regions -
| the real estate is cheaper.
| googlryas wrote:
| Yes the Netherlands is dense, but a vast majority of it is
| still open space. You can see by just looking at a
| satellite view of Zeewolde. It's almost entirely farmland.
| openplatypus wrote:
| > Better to build a data-center somewhere in Germany or
| France
|
| Hey hey, don't give them ideas. We don't want them here.
|
| Plus, given current European energy struggles, when Germany
| considers rationing power delivery, deploying Facebook
| space heaters sucking 200MW is not only irresponsible, but
| should be criminal.
| hankman86 wrote:
| Make it a condition that they supply all their power
| through wind and solar on site. Can't do it? Then no data
| centre for you.
| hankman86 wrote:
| Fair enough. I'd be OK if Facebook's data centres get
| scrutinised over their energy use, waste of land, etc.
| elsewhere as well. So yes, if other communities opt against
| new Facebook data centres then it'll mean that their services
| perform worse. So what? Society would be better off if
| Facebook ceased to exist.
| trasz wrote:
| The majority of Google or Facebook infrastructure runs stuff
| that's at best useless to their users, and it can be argued
| that it's actually harmful. I suspect there wouldn't be a
| problem with data centers if they were used for stuff that's
| useful.
| naoqj wrote:
| Good for whatever other country welcomes them.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Why, and are you sure?
| paxys wrote:
| Data centers are a hard sell in general because they don't really
| provide too much benefit to a community. They run on minimal
| labor, whether skilled or unskilled, so the job creation argument
| doesn't work. They have _huge_ energy requirements, which is a
| burden on the regional grid. And residents of an area won 't
| really care that the Facebook latency of all of Western Europe
| could improve by a few milliseconds because of their sacrifice.
| fivea wrote:
| > Data centers are a hard sell in general because they don't
| really provide too much benefit to a community.
|
| The Netherlands is already the home of some FANGs (AWS has a
| few edge locations in Amsterdam) and dominant hosting providers
| such as Cloudflare.
|
| I'm sure they'll be able to overcome the loss of Facebook.
| mhb wrote:
| Don't they pay for the energy they use? Isn't there a price for
| the energy that would make it appealing for the community to
| have them there?
| david38 wrote:
| Energy is their #1 cost so they bargain heavily for large
| subsidies.
| paxys wrote:
| Selling electricity is never good business. Governments are
| at most going to recover costs of transmission and some
| ongoing operation, never the huge up-front investments they
| need to make in the sector.
| reaperducer wrote:
| If Facebook paid its electric bill to the neighbors, sure.
| But it doesn't.
|
| We live in an age of energy scarcity. So even if people think
| about the electricity it uses, people probably see a data
| center as slurping up energy, causing prices for regular
| people to rise.
| dspillett wrote:
| If the local grid can't provide that then upgrades are
| needed. They may pay enough for that but then the energy
| needs to be sourced, which may mean extra fossil fuels and
| potentially breaking promises made on move-in towards a
| higher % renewable use. It can be about more than the
| financial price.
|
| Even if it was about the cost of sourcing and provision,
| someone that big will bargain down close to the minimum.
| There will be little benefit to share around elsewhere,
| unless of course this is made specifically part of the
| bargain (they can build, in exchange _they_ improve local
| infrastructure to cope, as greenly as the locals desire, with
| stated benefits for the area with compensation clauses for if
| said benefits don't turn up).
| ashtonkem wrote:
| They tend to go through a lot of water too, which is the big
| issue with the datacenter Meta wants to put in a town nearby to
| me.
| darknavi wrote:
| I'm out of the loop on data center design. How do they "go
| through" water? I'd imaging they pipe some in, use to cool,
| and then pipe it out.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Some percentage of it is lost to evaporation (fairly
| obvious if you see a big steam cloud coming out of a
| tower). How much that is...I have no idea. I don't think
| any place on earth forces big tech companies to report on
| the environmental impact and resource usage of their data
| centers. In fact, I think a lot of companies view these
| details as a competitive advantage and intentionally keep
| these facts secret even from non-datacenter folk in the
| same company.
| belval wrote:
| > "This is a purely political decision," Dutch Data Center
| Association managing director Stijn Grove said in a reaction sent
| to Reuters, adding that it had been made "largely because it is
| Facebook."
|
| Conflicts with
|
| > After the local council approved the project, party Leefbaar
| (Liveable) Zeewolde ran on a platform of opposition to the data
| center, citing environmental concerns and a lack of local input.
|
| But then Facebook's response seems pretty reasonable to me:
|
| > "We strongly believe in being good neighbors, so from day one
| of this journey we stressed a good fit between our project and
| the community is foremost among the criteria we consider when
| initiating and continuing our development processes," Meta said
| in a statement.
|
| To me all parties involved seemed pretty reasonable, the previous
| administration was favourable to the project, but got
| subsequently voted out of office. Now they just want time to make
| sure that they didn't get voted out because of that project.
| Facebook seems to understand.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| > largely because it's Facebook.
|
| Yes. If all the sorely needed renewable energy were to be used
| for something useful,there wouldn't be this much opposition.
| Using it for doom scrolling, ads, and waste of time - sure sane
| people are against it. I'm happy that people see through the
| bullshit for once.
|
| IMO, They should be allowed in only if they produce 100% of the
| renewable energy they could consume. Let Facebook pay the
| millions in windmills and solar panels, and sure, they can be
| part of the society.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > To me all parties involved seemed pretty reasonable, the
| previous administration was favourable to the project, but got
| subsequently voted out of office. Now they just want time to
| make sure that they didn't get voted out because of that
| project. Facebook seems to understand.
|
| I'm assuming your comment is in good faith, and you're not from
| Facebook's PR team. I don't think you're aware of the history
| of the case. Local opposition to the project is nothing new -
| starting with how Facebook hiding its identity with the locals.
|
| The full list of reasons is much more than I can comfortably
| type, I'd recommend reading this wired article instead -
| https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-dutch-data-center/
| hetspookjee wrote:
| That data center association is just a huge lobby front. Just
| the website in itself is a hilarious joke and a complete
| cherrypicked representation of some numbers. Good luck finding
| any numbers there that may possible harm their case.
|
| This data center is ridiculous beyond belief in Dutch aspects
| and that is even got this far in voting is solely due to the
| prime ministers choice to push these responsibilities toward
| local municipalities, a village of 30k inhabitants deciding if
| a power consumer equivalent of 700k inhabitants would fit in
| their region. The way they Facebook made their case was a joke
| too as they, just like Google and Microsoft argued there'd be
| many job opportunities and rest warmth.In addition they argued
| they needed to have an exception to be added to the power net
| which is already massively overburdened and lagging, just for
| the sake that the reigning party can appease their consumer.
| Even Eric Wiebes, the then minister of economics, meddled in
| this business in favour of "getting it done". In the end our
| prime minister Mark Rutte who was from the same party also
| started to chime in to move things forward.
|
| That this was shot down was only because, indeed, the entirety
| of the Netherlands was against this data center and the local
| municipality elections came by and destroyed all the parties
| that voted in favour. All of a sudden the powerless Huge de
| Groot found a way to block this thing.
|
| It is more than a political decision but that this got blocked
| in the end does move me slightly away from the extreme cynism
| that is most apt as view on the whole of the Netherlands
| policital theater.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > that is even got this far in voting is solely due to the
| prime ministers choice to push these responsibilities toward
| local municipalities, a village of 30k inhabitants deciding
| if a power consumer equivalent of 700k inhabitants would fit
| in their region.
|
| I don't see why that's a problem?
|
| > added to the power net which is already massively
| overburdened and lagging
|
| Is that being worked on? Is there a reason the electrical
| payments from the datacenter couldn't be used to make the
| power network net better? Charge them a higher rate for the
| first x years if necessary.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think a large part of the problem is that they're
| building renewable power as fast as they can, but are still
| heavily reliant on Russian gas for electricity. So building
| this data center would increase their reliance on Russia.
| belval wrote:
| To me that's just the system working as intended, if people
| voted against it then that's that.
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