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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.

To me that's just the system working as intended, if people voted against it then that's that.

> 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.

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.

So where does the data center go instead? Is that country not reliant on Russia?

It's Meta's responsibility to justify the existence of their data center. It's not any country's responsibility to host it.

Denmark as that was their secondary location i belief.

Piles of money really couldn't speed that up appreciably?

Or pay for non-Russian gas?

Those piles of money would not be coming from Facebook, they hardly have to pay for any infrastructure and are heavily subsidized.

The energy network has some issues. It needs a lot of work to be upgraded. Salary of technical engineers in semi-government is maxed and there is a shortage or workers at the infrastructure companies. Then there is a first come first serve rule for new connections which causes sun farms to go where the land is cheap, which is often the opposite area from where energy is used.

Piles of money inflate the cost of labor and distort the economy, as your using that pile of money to reallocate part of the existing labor pool.

It's one datacenter, the piles are not that big.

The problem with the diet part is that a local municipality has the ability to make a decision that will affect the entire country. To me that is problematic and weird.

The idea that you mention on charging them more and higher would indeeed be interesting be it not that the highest politicians aided in lobbying for a preference treatment that would save them quite a bit. The way it’s setup is that the population would eventually be paying for this addition for the net as big power consumers are extremely heavy subsidised up to the point that the heaviest users don’t pay any power taxes after a certain point.

> The problem with the diet part is that a local municipality has the ability to make a decision that will affect the entire country. To me that is problematic and weird.

If the prime minister is deliberately pushing it to the local level, I still don't see what the issue is.

Also is the local municipality in charge of getting them electricity? If they're only in charge of allowing the construction then that's fine.

> The idea that you mention on charging them more and higher would indeeed be interesting be it not that the highest politicians aided in lobbying for a preference treatment that would save them quite a bit. The way it’s setup is that the population would eventually be paying for this addition for the net as big power consumers are extremely heavy subsidised up to the point that the heaviest users don’t pay any power taxes after a certain point.

So the actual problem is the high level government?

Well it’s one man shoving this huge decision onto a local group that lacks the credentials and oversight to judge such a big effect. They’re in charge of deciding if this thing is allowe to be build there yes or no. It makes sense that the locals are able to voice that, but currently they’re almost the sole authority on the matter with the government being unable to step in. So that’s where to me the big problem is. Alsointeresting detail, the government said it was unable to act before the recent elections that showed the locals were actually widely against this idea and it was just the incumbent municipality that thought it’d be a good idea. Most of them are now without a job. After these results the government suddenly did find a way. I’m happy that it’s shot down but so find the whole going about super weird.

Yes indeed in this situation the actual problem is the high level government causing this oddity. From now on, and also how it used to be before most responsibilities were delegated to the locals, the government itself will be in charge of these decisions.

> 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.

> 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/