Dutch town approves licence for Meta knowledge centre, largest in Netherlands

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A lady holds smartphone with Fb logo in front of a displayed Fb’s new rebrand logo Meta in this illustration. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Characterize

By Toby Sterling and Stephanie van den Berg

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -The city of Zeewolde, 50km east of Amsterdam, on Thursday approved plans by Meta to originate the largest knowledge centre in the Netherlands from which Fb (NASDAQ:), Instagram and Whatsapp can serve customers in all locations Europe.

The facility, which is in a predicament to use 1.38GWh of electricity and conceal 166 hectares (410 acres) of farmland, is anticipated to escape on green energy and present the local financial system a plan shut but has been criticised by some politicians and environmental campaigners.

The centre is anticipated to set 400 permanent jobs in town, which has a inhabitants of 20,000.

Whereas the nation’s old financial affairs ministry lobbied to plan knowledge centres to the Netherlands, including major facilities by Google (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) that also escape on renewable energy, politicians possess unbiased no longer too long ago begun questioning whether the amount and placement of details centres have to light be particular by the national authorities.

“Hyperscale knowledge centres affirm an unreasonably mountainous ask on the on hand renewable energy in relationship to their societal or financial sign,” the parties forming High Minister Price Rutte’s new authorities wrote in their governing pact published a day before the Zeewolde council vote.

“We are able to be sharpening the national coordination and admissions requirements for licensing.”

Hendrik Visser, a council member for the VVD Celebration, acknowledged that there had been drawbacks to having a mountainous centre in town, but said the advantages had been bigger for general construction of town.

“To meet our online wants, knowledge centres are simply needed,” he said. “They’ve to head someplace, and it’s presumably no longer imprudent to originate them right here in Western Europe, centralized beneath our regulations, and to behold what they’ll indicate in this case for Zeewolde.”

Meta spokeswoman Melanie Roe said preliminary construction costs would possibly perhaps presumably perhaps perhaps be around 700 million euros ($795 million) and no date has been subject yet for completion.

The 800,000-solid inhabitants of Amsterdam are heavy customers of details providers supplied by Meta, yet regional authorities possess issued a ban on the reach of extra knowledge centres in the metropolis due to lines on its electric grid.

The Dutch Info Centre Association estimates that currently knowledge centres invent up about 3% of all Dutch electricity usage, but that will rise to 10% by 2030.

($1 = 0.8812 euros)

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