It's not nothing. Building new data centers requires investment, brings employment, etc. Objectively, large companies investing many billions to open large data centers in mostly rural areas is pretty nice overall. There are some issues with energy supply being gobbled up by these companies. But arguably even that is pretty nice since it just results in huge investments in renewable energy production, which is good for the economy.
The Netherlands has a self inflicted nitrogen crisis mainly due to intensive farming. Despite being a small country, it's one of the largest food exporters in the world. E.g. it is the world's leading exporter of tomatoes. But most of those are grown in green houses. The real problem is cattle. Cows, chickens, & pigs. Intensive cattle farming is causing loads of issues with manure and the go to solution is just fertilizing grass fields, which results in a lot of emissions and poisons the water and atmosphere. To the point where it's having health impacts. The only way out is to downsize that sector. Which is of course unpopular with farmers.
EU regulations related to nitrogen emissions are causing a need to do something about emissions. One of the results of this has been to reduce speeds on highways to 100km/h (ICE cars emit lots of nitrogen). This was done by a right leaning conservative government lead by a party that actually bumped the speed limit to 130km/h a few years before that. Additionally, until they get emissions down, a lot of construction projects along highways are blocked. And of course the government is under a lot of pressure to do something about the biggest emitters next: farmers.
So, farmers don't like this and recent election rounds resulted in a victory for a new pro-farmer party. Farmers have been protesting regularly for years and of course they are not too excited about MS and others converting their farm land into data centers while finding a way around the rules against new construction. That's not because they hate MS but because they are against the whole system of rules that is putting them out of business while companies like MS get to profit and the same government that's coming after them looks the other way.
The Netherlands has a self inflicted nitrogen crisis mainly due to intensive farming. Despite being a small country, it's one of the largest food exporters in the world. E.g. it is the world's leading exporter of tomatoes. But most of those are grown in green houses. The real problem is cattle. Cows, chickens, & pigs. Intensive cattle farming is causing loads of issues with manure and the go to solution is just fertilizing grass fields, which results in a lot of emissions and poisons the water and atmosphere. To the point where it's having health impacts. The only way out is to downsize that sector. Which is of course unpopular with farmers.
EU regulations related to nitrogen emissions are causing a need to do something about emissions. One of the results of this has been to reduce speeds on highways to 100km/h (ICE cars emit lots of nitrogen). This was done by a right leaning conservative government lead by a party that actually bumped the speed limit to 130km/h a few years before that. Additionally, until they get emissions down, a lot of construction projects along highways are blocked. And of course the government is under a lot of pressure to do something about the biggest emitters next: farmers.
So, farmers don't like this and recent election rounds resulted in a victory for a new pro-farmer party. Farmers have been protesting regularly for years and of course they are not too excited about MS and others converting their farm land into data centers while finding a way around the rules against new construction. That's not because they hate MS but because they are against the whole system of rules that is putting them out of business while companies like MS get to profit and the same government that's coming after them looks the other way.