BRUSSELS — Europe’s dreams to become an artificial intelligence superpower are bumping into the realities of power supplies and public opinion.
The European Commission is set to unveil in May plans to triple the bloc’s data center capacity within seven years. Brussels wants to close a gap with the United States and China on artificial intelligence and it needs to force a rapid expansion in cloud computing capacity to do that.
Amid a massive public backlash against data centers in the United States because of energy and water consumption, Europe is facing the same challenges. Draft Commission documents obtained by POLITICO ahead of the announcement show many data centers are already struggling with poor energy and water efficiency. And across the continent, local opposition groups have sprung up to protest the environmental and social impacts of expansion.
This underscores a growing tension at the heart of the EU’s tech ambitions: Europe wants to catch up with global competitors on AI, but the physical backbone required to do this — vast, energy-hungry data centers — is fast running up against limits.
