Residents demand transparency over planned data centres in Leopoldsdorf

Residents have criticised the lack of information about two planned data centres in Leopoldsdorf, in the Bruck an der Leitha district. At an ORF public discussion programme, many called for more say in the projects, while operators and experts highlighted the value of digital infrastructure.

US company CloudHQ plans three data-centre buildings about 25 metres high, with a combined grid connection capacity of 150 megawatts, as well as a substation and backup generators. The project must undergo an environmental impact assessment, and no construction date has been set. A few hundred metres away, Garbe.DC is planning another data centre, initially with a connection capacity of 28 megawatts.

The plans have raised questions about electricity demand, land use, noise and the potential use of waste heat. The facilities are intended to provide infrastructure for businesses, cloud services and artificial intelligence. Bastian Vieregge, who started a petition signed by about 600 people from the two affected municipalities, said residents wanted a greater role in the process and more engagement than the legal minimum required.

People attending the ORF discussion, held in cooperation with the newspaper Kurier, raised concerns about the facilities’ proximity to homes and possible noise from the substation and backup generators. One attendee called for a greater distance from residential areas. Others questioned whether their objections could still influence the projects.

Leopoldsdorf Mayor Fritz Blasnek said the municipality had limited authority. The land had been zoned for commercial and industrial use for decades, he said. The municipality had increased the permitted building height and agreed on a nine-million-euro infrastructure contribution. Negotiations had been subject to confidentiality, but Blasnek said communication could be improved.

A survey of 800 people presented by Christoph Haselmayer of the Institute for Demoscopy and Data Analysis found that 82 per cent considered the information available insufficient. Some 90 per cent wanted specific assessments, 84 per cent said using the waste heat was important, and 56 per cent saw opportunities for the economy and digital sector.

Lower Austria’s environmental ombudsman, Tom Hansmann, said approval was still pending. The environmental impact assessment would examine issues including noise and air pollutants, and his office could raise residents’ concerns. If the legal requirements were met, the projects would be entitled to approval; otherwise, authorities could impose conditions or reject them. CloudHQ is not covered by Lower Austria’s new location rules because of transitional provisions, Hansmann said. The assessment cannot guarantee that the waste heat will be used.

Martin Madlo, president of the Austrian Datacenter Association, said finding a viable user for data-centre heat was not straightforward. He said he had searched for years before finding a technically and economically workable solution with Klinik Floridsdorf, a hospital in Vienna. CloudHQ representative Andreas Graf-Matzner said the company had spoken with energy provider EVN and a tomato farm in Münchendorf, in the Mödling district, but any arrangement would need to be economically viable.

Ivona Brandic, a professor of high-performance computing systems at TU Wien, said data centres could shift some electricity use across time and place, scheduling certain computing tasks for periods when more power was available. Researchers are studying how this flexibility could help stabilise electricity grids.