As artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly prominent political issue, public resistance to data centers is spreading beyond the United States to Europe and Asia—creating fresh risks for investors.
Negative sentiment is intensifying across Europe, where densely populated countries and comparatively high electricity prices leave communities and governments with more at stake, experts told CNBC.
Similar tensions are emerging in South Korea. Opposition is growing to data centers planned near residential neighborhoods, prompting calls for tighter local restrictions even as the national government seeks to accelerate construction.
According to research from STL Partners, public opposition has already affected roughly $42 billion in European data center investments through project delays and cancellations. In the United States, the comparable figure is about $77 billion.
The backlash could become the “straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Olivier Darmouni, an associate professor at HEC Paris who specializes in the energy transition, told CNBC.
Data center opposition is growing in Europe
More than 70 data center projects in Europe were rejected or restricted between January and April—exceeding the total for all of 2025, according to the European Data Center Monitor. The organization said opposition has expanded from local town halls to courts, regulators and national parliaments.
Scotland has paused planning approvals for new hyperscale data centers after campaigners urged the government to avoid becoming a “cautionary tale” like Ireland, where soaring electricity demand resulted in a moratorium.
Restrictions are also increasing in the Nordic countries, which attracted investors with abundant land and renewable energy. Following a surge in applications for electricity, Denmark passed an emergency law that could place data centers at the back of the queue for grid connections.
Spain proposed new data center regulations this summer that would require facilities to obtain 80% of their electricity from renewable sources. In the U.K., several projects have stalled amid opposition from local residents.
Much of the resistance focuses on water consumption, electricity demand, rising power prices and the vast amount of land some facilities occupy. There is also limited agreement over how many permanent jobs the industry creates, while no established model exists for estimating a data center’s economic value per megawatt.
“The gains of AI are very diffused,” Darmouni told CNBC.
“There’s definitely been more understanding of the scale of the potential AI build-out and its geographical spread, and perhaps … more information about how much bigger these are, and that they’re a little bit more like giant ghost warehouses that consume a lot of resources and can hurt local communities in some ways.”
Europe’s denser population, combined with the fact that many data center operators are U.S. companies, could make the backlash particularly severe in the region, the professor added.
What’s happening in Asia
South Korea, home to technology giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, is central to the global AI supply chain. In June, the government identified AI data centers as one of three major investment priorities, alongside semiconductors and physical AI.
However, the national drive to expand the infrastructure needed for AI is encountering resistance from local communities.
In Seoul’s southwestern Geumcheon district, residents have asked authorities to revoke a building permit and stop construction of a data center near their homes, according to the local government.
In July, officials announced plans to require approval from a majority of residents living within 200 meters of proposed data center sites. They also proposed a three-stage process for reviewing projects and mediating disputes.
SUWON, SOUTH KOREA: An employee checks a server room in the Samsung Networks’ Telco Data Center at the Samsung Electronics HQ, Samsung Digital City, on June 13, 2023 in Suwon, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Residents have also gathered outside the local government office on weekday mornings for months to protest the project. Local media reported that the demonstrations had continued for 172 days as of mid-August.
In Gwacheon, a city just south of Seoul, a local council member proposed an ordinance aimed at protecting nearby residents from risks associated with data centers operating around the clock, including potential fires involving backup batteries.
Should investors be worried about the backlash?
Despite the pusback, the AI boom shows little sign of slowing down.
But a community’s ability “to derail a $10 billion [data center] plan is quite powerful,” said Asya Walters, managing director at Alvarez & Marsal.
She told CNBC the business-friendly environment in the U.S. has historically made it easier to overcome pushback.
But in Europe and Asia, there’s some “hot and coldness” at the country level about where demand is going, Walters said. The “push and pull” between favorable conditions for data centers and more restrictive regulation can be challenging for investment.
Public backlash can also end up raising costs for operators, because even if they pull out of a project before construction starts, money will likely have already been spent.
Though most capex expenditure happens after the permits are in place, operators spend a lot to reach that point, “so there is some loss that could happen there if they never get the permits,” Walters said.
We used to be a completely unknown part of the economy. We were just a black box. Now we are one of the fundamental layers driving the economy.
“Digital infrastructure is becoming more visible and it’s understandable that communities want to understand what’s being built near them, why it’s needed and how local impacts are being managed,” said Eulalia Flo, vice president of growth and emerging markets, EMEA at Equinix, one of the biggest data center operators in Europe.
“We don’t see this as a structural constraint on growth, but the policy environment is genuinely tightening in some markets,” said Flo.
But the AI buildout has meant “a misunderstanding of the industry in a very broad sense,” according to Dominic Ward, CEO of data center operator Verne.
“We used to be a completely unknown part of the economy,” Ward told CNBC. “We were just a black box. We were just a building that had stuff that went in that nobody understood. Now we are one of the fundamental layers driving the economy.”
He added: “Now everybody knows where they are, so there’s kind of no hiding behind this.”
