Data centres: Trentino’s solution to tackling the NIMBY effect

South Memphis is a historic hotbed of social unrest, not far from the spot where Martin Luther King was assassinated. It is a world away, in every respect, from the Val di Non, the peaceful valley in Trentino known for its apple orchards. In Memphis, Elon Musk’s xAI has installed ‘Colossus’, a gigantic data centre for training AI. Beneath the apple orchards of Trentino, in the tunnels of a mine, cheese-maturing facilities, bottles of wine and the servers of Europe’s first data centre built inside an active quarry all coexist. No land take, natural cooling, zero water extraction, and seismic and electromagnetic protection guaranteed by millions of cubic metres of rock. One of the most successful examples of an invisible data centre that is neutral from both a community and environmental perspective. An important experiment at a time when protests against the rapid proliferation of data centres are rife: an almost perfect anti-NIMBY project.

The term nimby, like its counterpart woke, has historically served a very clear political function, ever since Nicholas Ridley, a Conservative British minister, used it to brand groups opposing building expansion projects in the countryside, with a negative and accusatory connotation. Just like the term woke, which, having originally signified African-American awareness of structural racism, has over time seen its meaning turned on its head, particularly by the media, politicians and conservative commentators. This has led to today’s paradox, where the conservative right and the so-called progressive left find themselves allied in using both terms pejoratively to denigrate forms of dissent and opposition which, in truth, concern structural issues of equality and fairness rather than particularistic or self-serving interests.

To accept that opposition to data centres is merely a manifestation of parochial interests – specifically of a NIMBY nature – is to fall into the trap of trite development-centred propaganda, shifting the focus away from structural and legitimate issues of social justice towards the narrow-mindedness of petty interests.

The Trentino experiment, precisely because it was designed to be NIMBY-proof, serves to highlight a second level of conflict – distinct from the first and likely to become the dominant one – as demonstrated by the shift in tone of many recent protests: the data centre is no longer seen as a neighbourhood issue, but as a physical embodiment of the power wielded by a handful of tech companies. It no longer matters where it is built or how much water it consumes, but what it is: the only tangible focal point on which to direct a protest against a phenomenon — the concentration of capital and decision-making power in the hands of a few platforms — which would otherwise remain entirely abstract. It is no coincidence that an antitrust expert such as Zephyr Teachout speaks of opposition to data centres as the only possible leverage for negotiating a more democratic AI, just as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez do at an institutional level.

It would be a mistake to reduce the protests to merely local and anti-development phenomena. Viewed in its proper context, the issue is that opposition to these crucial hubs for the development of AI represents the only opportunity available to citizens to counter a highly aggressive drift towards technological over-power that threatens democratic institutions, the sole and final window of opportunity through which citizens can have their say on the aims and purposes of technical and economic progress. The Trentino mine is not a paradigm, but a small example showing that, with creativity and innovation, the NIMBY aspect of the problem can be addressed. Far more complex is the iconoclastic and structurally antagonistic nature of the protests against Colossus in Memphis. This is what social innovators and all those who today call themselves progressives should be addressing.