Protesters are organising a coordinated two-day action against data-centre expansion across fifteen European nations. More than one hundred activist groups have joined the “Stop Dirty Data Centres” campaign, urging a moratorium on large-scale projects because of environmental and social costs they deem unaffordable, and are calling on policymakers to halt approvals until comprehensive impact assessments are completed.
Demonstrations are scheduled in several capitals and tech hubs. Activists will gather outside the Polish parliament in Warsaw, march through Dublin, protest a Microsoft facility in Denmark, hold a teach-in near a proposed site in Amsterdam, and convene in London’s Brick Lane, where a local data-centre development faces opposition.
Owen Espley, the coordinator of the pan-European campaign, said communities in the United States and Europe are sending a clear message about the trajectory of data-centre construction. Organisers anticipate turnout ranging from a handful of participants at smaller sites to several hundred attendees at larger gatherings such as Brick Lane and Dublin.
The protest coalition includes well-known environmental NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, together with Foxglove, a London-based campaign advocating a fairer technology future. These groups highlight the ecological footprint of data-centres, arguing that the energy intensity of artificial-intelligence workloads threatens climate targets and local ecosystems.
Research from Germany’s Öko-Institut projects that carbon-dioxide emissions associated with AI data-centres could rise sixfold by 2030 compared with 2023 levels. In the United Kingdom, the sector’s energy consumption might generate up to 123 million tonnes of CO₂ over the next decade, an amount comparable to emissions from roughly 2.7 million residents.
Campaigners also cite social concerns, ranging from the mental-health impact of chat-bots to the risk of AI-driven job displacement and the prioritisation of data-centre sites over affordable housing. The tech industry counters that facilities create construction and operational jobs and underpin economic growth by supporting AI development. Approximately 250 global projects exceeding 100 megawatts were announced between 2021 and 2024, with North America leading the pipeline, while the UK alone has 315 pending connections demanding 73 GW of power against a national peak of 45 GW.