G2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022
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Washington, D.C. 20071 • Advertising: Noelle Wainwright, 202-334-7610, [email protected]BUSINESSDilbert Scott Adamster will decide whether Meta can
buy land in Zeewolde. “If Hugo de
Jonge says we will sell it, then
Meta can go on,” Teunissen said.
Some in Zeewolde, such as
farmer Leon de Geus, still hope
the company will build the com-
puting center. In an interview, he
noted that the community always
planned to use part of the site for
an industrial purpose, and a data
center would be a less disruptive
option than a distribution ware-
house or some other businesses.
“We are happy with Meta as a
neighbor, and I hope they will
come,” he said. “I’ve seen the
plans for the data center,” he says.”
I was surprised. It’s beautiful. It’s
green. There are trees, there’s
wood and water. ... The cows can
still walk around. It’s fantastic.”
But for now, local activist
Schaap is relieved by Meta’s deci-
sion to reassess its plans. “It’s not
up to Mark Zuckerberg to decide
whether the data center is wel-
come here or not,” she said, refer-
ring to Meta’s chief executive. “We
don’t want it. Seventy percent of
the people in the village don’t
want this thing here.”infrastructure that is needed for
that.”
Sen. Arda Gerkens, who be-
longs to the Socialist Party and
voted in favor of the motion, ac-
knowledged the nation needs
data centers but says the govern-
ment should weigh which data
centers it allows and what re-
sources they absorb.
“[Meta’s plans] would mean
that the existing sustainable en-
ergy would go to this particular
data center instead of going to
households,” she said. “If you have
scarce sustainable energy and
scarce landscape, then you should
look at the added value of such a
data center. And basically, Face-
book doesn’t have an added value.
Not in my opinion.”
De Vries, the professor, said t he
government could establish some
standards for these sites.
“You can say you cannot use
drinking water,” he said. “Put so-
lar panels on your roof. Build big
walls to reduce the noise levels.
Build a nice data center, not just a
block of bricks — something
that’s not so ugly.”
In the end, the planning minis-velopment processes,” the compa-
ny said. “Given the current cir-
cumstances, we have decided to
pause our development efforts in
Zeewolde.”
Stijn Grove, managing director
of the Dutch data center associa-
tion, said many who oppose these
operations still rely on them in
their everyday lives.
“Even though everyone is
working from home, everyone is
on their mobile phone constantly,
watching Netflix ... and still they
don’t want data centers,” he said.
“There’s a real disconnect in this
world.”
Grove said he would welcome a
national policy, rather than the
current piecemeal approach.
“Make a central policy on digi-
tal infrastructure, because we all
need it. But we push it to lower
layers of government, and then it
spreads, and nobody is responsi-
ble, and things get messy,” he said.
“And that’s what you saw in Zee-
wolde. You cannot have on the
one hand a goal where you say we
want to be digitally advanced,
and then on the other hand you
don’t have a policy on the digitalissue — now people in the govern-
ment in The Hague are scratching
their heads and thinking, ‘Maybe
we need to think about a new
policy concerning hyperscales.’”
Now these projects are facing
stricter scrutiny. In February the
country’s minister of housing and
spatial planning, Hugo de Jonge,
said he would place a nine-month
moratorium on granting applica-
tions for new data centers while
he reviews how they fit in with a
national plan that charts future
development given climate im-
pacts and other challenges.
But de Jonge made it clear this
pause did not apply to the Zeewol-
de project, since the national min-
ister of internal affairs, who holds
the authority to sell the land in
question, assured the local gov-
ernment last August that the sale
could go through.
Voters in Zeewolde, however,
had other plans. In March, the
elected officials who had backed
the data center lost in a landslide
to Leefbaar Zeewolde, a party
that ran on its opposition to the
project.
Shortly after those local elec-
tions, Christine Teunissen, a
member of parliament with the
pro-environment Partij voor de
Dieren (“Party for the Animals”),
brought a motion to the floor
asking the government to make
the planned Meta data center
subject to the government’s on-
going environmental review.
The motion, which said the
project would impose a “heavy
burden on energy supplies, fertile
agricultural land and scarce
freshwater supplies,” passed by a
vote of 82 to 68.
“Ten minutes after the vote,
there was a message on our na-
tional news that Meta was paus-
ing its plans to put the data center
there,” Teunissen recalled in an
interview.
Meta issued a statement em-
phasizing its focus on maintain-
ing good relations with local resi-
dents.
“We strongly believe in being
good neighbors, so from day one
of this journey we stressed a good
fit between our project and the
community is foremost among
the criteria we consider when
initiating and continuing our de-town of Zeewolde didn’t exist
until 1979, when its first inhabit-
ants arrived at a planned commu-
nity built on land recovered from
the sea. It grew from a place with
no electricity or tap water to one
with roughly 22,000 residents,
many of whom raise onions, sug-
ar beets and potatoes, or cattle.
It is also the country’s only city
that generates more renewable
power than it consumes in fossil
fuels, hosting one of the country’s
largest onshore wind farms.
While that made it an attractive
site for Meta — which aims to
serve tens of millions of European
Facebook, Instagram and Whats-
App users with a single data cen-
ter — it has raised questions
about whether Dutch officials can
reconcile their quest to dominate
this corner of the computing mar-
ket with the nation’s sustainabili-
ty goals.
De Vries estimated that, ac-
cording to Meta’s projections, the
data center will consume at least
1.3 terawatts of electrical power
per year, which would tap a huge
share of the country’s renewable
energy.
“That is equal to the total en-
ergy consumption of all house-
holds in the city of Amsterdam,”
de Vries said in a phone interview.
“That’s not a trifle.”
The Netherlands, which is a
little larger than Maryland, al-
ready hosts about 200 data cen-
ters, including Google and Micro-
soft hyperscales. The government
has been “very eager” to recruit
such projects, de Vries said, offer-
ing low taxes and cut-rate elec-
tricity prices.
These operations account for
about 2 percent of the country’s
energy demand, according to
Martien Visser, a lecturer in en-
ergy transition at Hanze Univer-
sity of Applied Sciences in Gron-
ingen, and use 10 percent of its
wind power.
Visser added that the Nether-
lands aims to increase its wind
energy supply between now and
the end of the decade through
offshore turbines but said that a
major expansion of data centers
could sap that additional supply.
While local leaders in Zeewol-
de had been talking to Meta,
formerly known as Facebook,
since 2019, these plans attracted
national attention only late last
year, when its local council voted
to change the zoning plan to reas-
sign agricultural land as an indus-
trial area. The move would clear
the way for the national govern-
ment, which has the authority to
sell the land, to transfer it to Meta.
Farmers and other residents,
as well as organizations such as
LTO Noord, a business associa-
tion for the region’s farmers and
horticulturists, objected ahead of
the vote.
LTO President Jaap Lodders
said in an interview that owing to
its sea-rescued roots, the soil in
Zeewolde is uniquely rich — the
best in the country — and should
be reserved for agriculture. But
land is not the only resource at
stake.
“We are also concerned for the
water quality,” he said. “The local
canal water would be used for
cooling, but to protect the cooling
systems it will be treated with
chemicals, then returned to the
canal. But we have no guarantee it
will be clean.”
Local Zeewolde activist Susan
Schaap, who has lived in Zeewol-
de for 25 years, has been leading
the charge against the building of
the center for more than a year as
chair of the DataTruc Zeewolde
Foundation, a community protest
group. The organization has
sought to mobilize support for the
cause through a website, a peti-
tion and — somewhat ironically
— a Facebook page.
“We use Facebook against
Facebook,” she said in an inter-
view. “Because of the noise we
made — we just kept yelling and
screaming to put the focus on this
DATA CENTER FROM G1
Proposed data center would be length of 245 football fields
ILVY NJIOKIKTJIEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTdisruptive and making
colleagues uncomfortable.
But I wonder if this damsel’s
distress isn’t about this dress, but
rather anxiety about making the
right impression at work while
navigating the sartorial and
financial minefield that is
women’s fashion. If you’re at all
inclined to help, you could
recommend your favorite shops,
sellers and tailors, or even offer
to weigh in on photos of items
she’s considering.
You can help a sister out
without having to give her the
literal clothes off your back.
[email protected]Of course, there’s always the
possibility this will escalate into a
“Single White Female” movie
scenario in which no amount of
“As I’ve said before, I don’t lend
out my clothes” can get Jill to
chill, or she starts retaliating to a
degree that hinders your ability
to work in peace. If that seems
plausible, you might want to keep
track of your conversations and
bystanders who overhear them in
case you need to establish a clear
behavioral pattern for HR. Even
if her behavior doesn’t
technically violate any
employment laws, management
needs to step in if she’s beingludicrous, and deserves an
equally sincere answer: a kind
but firm, “Oh, I don’t lend out my
clothes.” Repeat as needed.
On the off chance you’re
wondering if swapping clothes is
something everyone just seemed
to take up during the pandemic,
like baking sourdough and
playing pickleball, let me assure
you that you are under no
obligation to lend out something
you sought, selected and bought
for your personal use. Even if
you’re friends. Even if she
outranks you. Even if she pouts.
Even if you never intend to wear
that dress again.I was originally inclined to cut
Jill some slack for her
overreaching compliments. Who
among us has not emerged from
pandemic isolation needing to
recalibrate our social filters? In
that light, my advice would be to
laugh off her over-the-top
comments. Either she would
appreciate your playing along
with her obvious (ahem) joke, or
she would take the hint that
professionals who want to be
taken seriously do not threaten to
maul colleagues like a jealous
fairy tale stepsister.
But a direct request to borrow
your clothes is clearly sincere, ifasking for volunteers to be at the
event. The other day in passing,
Jill said, “Oh, I want to borrow
that blue lace dress you wore to
XYZ event from a few months
ago!” I was a little surprised and
didn’t respond in the moment.
I’m not going to be
volunteering for the upcoming
event. I would like your opinion
on how to respond when she gets
wind that I won’t be there,
because I have a strong sense that
she’ll bring up the dress again.
Karla: All I’m saying is, I
didn’t get letters like this when
people were working from home
in hoodies.Reader: My co-
worker of about a
year, “Jill,”
frequently
compliments my
work outfits and
inquires about the
brand or where I
got them. They are
not designer,
usually resale. At
first the
comments were nice, but it’s
become an overreach when she’s
said things like, “I like it so much
I want to rip it off you.”
Our employer is having a big
gala fundraiser and has been
N aked ambition? Woman praises colleague’s outfits, then asks to borrow one.
Work
Advice
KARLA L.
MILLER
Windmills stand last
month next to the field
where Facebook parent
company Meta wanted to
build a data center in
Zeewolde, the
Netherlands. The facility
was to be powered
entirely by clean energy,
part of the Netherlands’
pitch that it can help
support Europe’s
computing needs while
also protecting the
environment. Meta has
postponed the plans
amid local opposition.