Germany is planning to double its data center capacity by 2030, and this issue has been heavily debated in the town of Dietzenbach, near Frankfurt. Technology companies Google, EdgeConnex, and Maincubes have taken steps to establish new data centers in this city.
Local Concerns About Environmental Impacts
Residents of Dietzenbach are worried about rising water and electricity costs, as well as increasing temperatures in their area. Wilhelm Sauer, one of the residents, stated: "We want to know what the benefits of these projects are for the local community and what the environmental impacts will be." He and other local activists believe that the pressure from these centers on regional resources may not be offset by the limited number of new jobs created.
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Mayor's Predictions and Researchers' Doubts
Dieter Lang, the mayor of Dietzenbach from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), optimistically predicted that around 100 high-value jobs would come to his city through the Google data center, stating: "We expect to gain a significant financial share from taxes as well." However, Tara Merck, a data center researcher at the Wisenbaum Institute, doubts this and says that Germany will likely see little revenue from data centers managed by American companies.
Merck also pointed to a law that allows companies to declare their water and electricity consumption data as trade secrets, which could make monitoring resource consumption difficult. Meanwhile, in August 2026, the German government launched a registration for data centers that includes information about energy consumption, water, and energy optimization measures for data centers, although this list includes only about 300 data centers.
Overall, Germany is the largest data center market in Europe, and the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main area, where Dietzenbach is located, houses more than a third of the country's total data center capacity. While the German government seeks to double data center capacity, various political parties have differing opinions on this plan.
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