This summer, the Amsterdam municipality granted a construction permit for a mega data centre in Amstel III in Amsterdam-Zuidoost.
The facility, built by the big tech company Equinix, is planned to consist of four towers up to 60 meters tall. If completed, it is projected to consume 779 million kilowatt hours of electricity and over one billion litres of drinking water per year. To make matters worst, it is planned to be built on a grid already strained to capacity, in a neighbourhood being transformed into a residential area of 8,000 homes. This can result in thousands of homes with no guaranteed grid connection.
The plan to build this in Zuidoost is no coincidence. It is a pattern. Research by the Kapor Foundation showed an emerging and troubling national trend where Big Tech and data centre developers are choosing vulnerable communities as sacrifice zones). A spatial analysis of data centres in California found that facilities cluster overwhelmingly in communities of colour already burdened by pollution and poor health outcomes. When developers in South Carolina failed to site a comparable complex in a whiter, more affluent area, they simply moved it to a county where 41% of residents are Black or Latinx. The same logic operates here in Zuidoost, where moving to another location in the city does not seem to be considered. Equinix filed its permit application in Amsterdam before the city’s 2023 construction moratorium, exploiting a legal loophole to proceed regardless of community impact. That is not coincidental. That is deliberate site selection, fueled by racism.
And the health consequences are real. Backup diesel generators produce harmful compounds linked to lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. Researchers in the US found data centres could contribute to 600,000 asthma cases annually by 2028. These risks hit hardest on the communities closest to the facilities.
For this reason, Zuidoost resident and organiser Dylan Bakker has been calling for an immediate halt to the data centre plans. He launched the WhatsApp group “Stop Datacenter ZO,” which within weeks gathered over 300 residents, each of whom submitted a formal objection to the permit. “It is about our drinking water, our electricity. These are now being used for enormous tech companies and their profit.” His call is clear: join the community fighting against data centres in Zuidoost, the Noord-Holland province as a whole, and put pressure on (local) politicians.
Today, 2 September 2026, the Amsterdam city council votes on the final zoning plans for Amstel III. This is a powerful opportunity to revoke the construction permit, protect Zuidoost from the exploitative Big Tech expansion, and make clear that no neighbourhood is a sacrifice zone. To be continued!
P.S. On 6 November there is a mass action against data centres.
See: Weer protest tegen datacenter, maar ‘we weten allemaal dat we ze nodig hebben at NOS.
Image is an artist impression by Equinix.