The discomfort with data centers

Isn't that nice: Construction site of a 600 megawatt data center in Hutto, Texas, April 2026.

Without data centers, there is no Internet: They house the servers that are needed for websites, cloud services and much more. This means they have been a central part of the IT infrastructure for decades. However, for several years now, due to the boom in AI programs, the number of data centers has been increasing worldwide - and they are getting bigger and bigger: until recently, a data center with an output of five to ten megawatts was considered large, but the current generation already has 200 to 500 megawatts, and in some cases even a gigawatt of performance.

In Germany, Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) has set the goal of doubling the total performance of its own data centers by 2030. The goal is “sovereignty” and independence from US IT companies, also in view of the unreliability of the US government under President Donald Trump. There are currently around 2,000 data centers in Germany, including around 100 particularly large ones. 99 more are currently planned, 41 of which are already under construction. However, according to an analysis by NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung, US companies such as Amazon or Microsoft are involved in a good fifth of the projects, although this is precisely what should be avoided. According to Ralph Hintemann, an expert at the Borderstep Institute, which advises the federal government on the so-called national data center strategy, Germany should only work with European companies. Apparently it's not that easy.

Data centers are extremely ugly. They typically consist of several windowless building blocks, each up to 25 meters high, on an area the size of dozens of football fields.

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