20260830 Noch mehr heiße Luft

Only more hot air

German data centers already consume 21 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to FragDenStaat in its latest newsletter. That’s as much as the entire states of Hesse or Rhineland-Palatinate consume. This energy is either released into the environment as hot air or used to further heat the rivers, which are already too warm.

Those who tout artificial intelligence (AI) as a technology of the future are calling for more and larger data centers. Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche (CDU) supports and is accelerating the expansion of data centers and even wants to prevent their resource consumption from having to be disclosed. Efficiency and climate protection requirements are to be relaxed or postponed, writes FragDenStaat.

Almost no one knows where data centers are already in operation, and even fewer are aware of where such facilities are planned to be built and how many there will be. That is why the linked article includes a map titled “Hot Air” with the following information:

where data centers are located or planned,

how much energy they consume,

whether there are already groundwater problems in the respective counties, and

where fossil fuel-fired power plants are being built in parallel to meet the data centers’ enormous electricity demand in the future.

Much of the information — such as details on electricity consumption and ownership — remains unclear. Yet this information is essential for even beginning to plan which data centers will eventually become financially viable and, even more so, which natural gas power plants may actually be necessary. In fact, such planning and compilation of data for the state’s residents would be the responsibility of the Ministry of Economic Affairs if it were to act in the public interest.

But it seems that Federal Minister of Economics Reiche is not only subordinating environmental and climate issues to economic interests. Human rights are also being eroded in the process, as a joint investigation by the Frankfurter Rundschau and FragDenStaat reveals: In 2024, the EU adopted a strong European Supply Chain Act that obligates companies to ensure fair conditions along global supply chains. But last year, the European Commission reopened the legislation — and a secret alliance of fossil fuel corporations, together with Arab states and the U.S. government, took targeted action against the directive, as FragDenStaat reveals with documents from

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)