AI has become part of everyday life in Amsterdam: students use language models for their assignments, civil servants use AI tools for policy analysis, and companies optimise their processes with data-driven systems. So it makes sense that the city wants to facilitate the infrastructure behind it. Yet according to Rick van Kersbergen, Sustainable AI expert at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA), the arrival of a new large-scale data centre in the Westelijk Havengebied raises difficult questions. In an opinion piece, he explores its ecological, societal and political consequences.
Data centres form the backbone of the digital services we all use every day. For a knowledge city with universities, startups and a strong creative industry, facilitating AI infrastructure seems like a logical step. But Van Kersbergen sees a dilemma: the new data centre, the largest in Amsterdam, will be used almost entirely by American tech company Microsoft. That, he argues, touches not only on environmental impact, but also on the question of who has control over the digital infrastructure society increasingly relies on. He also notes that the decision-making process was controversial, given the municipality’s earlier halt on new data centres.
Data centres consume large amounts of water and electricity. Citing NRC, Van Kersbergen writes that this data centre will use roughly as much electricity as all households in Haarlem combined. The building near Sloterdijk will also take up 10,000 square metres across three towers, taller than the data centre at Amsterdam Science Park. All this in a region where housing, industry and the energy transition are already competing for limited space and grid capacity, and where new power connections are not always possible.
According to Van Kersbergen, sustainability has not been sufficiently taken into account. He refers to professor Aimee van Wynsberghe, who describes sustainable development as meeting the needs of the present without undermining those of future generations. For every new data centre, he argues, we should ask which systems it sustains, who they work for, and which societal interests they serve.
When a data centre mainly serves a single non-European commercial party, the discussion shifts from how energy-efficient the building is to more fundamental questions. Does this infrastructure contribute to a fair and future-proof digital development? Does it strengthen the economic and political resilience of the region, or does it increase existing dependencies?
Across Europe, there is a growing awareness that digital infrastructure has become heavily dependent on a handful of American technology companies. Van Kersbergen therefore believes municipalities should have a say in the conditions under which such infrastructure is allowed. In his view, the key question for Amsterdam’s city council is which digital infrastructure the city wants to facilitate, together with the province and other levels of government, and under what conditions.
If space is offered to a new data centre, he argues, clear public conditions should come with it: transparent energy use, demonstrable societal value, and explicit room for European or public alternatives. As Van Kersbergen concludes, the future of Amsterdam as a digital city depends not only on how much data is stored, but above all on who controls it, and in whose interest that infrastructure is designed.
Read also
