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Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
- markusw 5mo ago[flagged]
- thinkingtoilet 5mo agoYeah, but they do produce food which data centers do not. This is an odd argument to make.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoOnly a very small fraction of farmland produces food we directly eat. The OP's linked article has a great illustration of that.
- napolux 5mo agothat's the argument an AI will make to preserve itself.
- jandrewrogers 5mo agoWe already produce far more food than we need. The amount of land in the US used for corn ethanol production alone is the size of a medium European country. Data centers are not displacing food. That argument is disingenuous. Even in Italy agricultural land goes unused because of low demand.
- joe_mamba 5mo agoYeah agriculture is bad for the environment, but at least it feeds us to keep us alive, so we can say it's worth it. Datacenters don't. They don't even create that many jobs like a factory for instance so we can say the mass employment offsets the environmental damage.
- deburo 5mo agoOne can say that food can be produced elsewhere, but also data centers might be a critical component of future society if we don't solve birth rates. Also, fewer births mean less food required.
- dukeyukey 5mo agoThe services provided by a data center do provide jobs. My job for one, and I'm guessing a majority of posters here too.
- darkwater 5mo ago[flagged]
- john_strinlai 5mo agothey said "that many jobs" not "no jobs". compared to something like a car factory, data centers do not provide that many jobs. (and the jobs are of significantly different nature)
- dukeyukey 5mo agoDirectly, sure. Indirectly, they have created many millions of jobs. Tens of millions at the very lowest. There are nearly 30 million web developers alone.
- john_strinlai 5mo agothe problem is that many of those jobs often aren't in the locale. by necessity, car factory workers work, live, spend money, and pay taxes in the same general area as the car factory. that does not hold true for web developers (which may be in entirely different countries).
- dukeyukey 5mo agoI recognise that makes it politically tricky, but "creates almost no jobs" and "creates lots of jobs, but dispersed elsewhere" are two very different statements. And for data centers the latter is true, and the former is a lie.
- nekzn 5mo ago[flagged]
- victorbjorklund 5mo agoThis has nothing to do with EU. This is a regional law in a part of Italy. It’s like saying ”Now Americans want X” for what a random city somewhere in US made a rule about.
- throwawayffffas 5mo ago> After bribing people to abandon the agricultural sector for decades What? A quarter of EU expenditure is spent on agricultural subsidies, i.e. directly paying people to be farmers.
- utopiah 5mo agoI imagine they're thinking of late 19th century. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- dukeyukey 5mo ago1. The EU spends enormous sums subsidising farmers. 2. Italy != Europe. Countries can and will do things differently to other countries.
- toasty228 5mo ago> 1. The EU spends enormous sums subsidising farmers. As if it was a charity lmao, this is a top priority, before defense even, food security will become more and more of a problem, that and water
- pasc1878 5mo agoBut EU does not pay farmers to farm efficiently and produce more food but does it to keep inefficient ones going so not much to do with actual food security.
- 5mo ago
- mistic92 5mo ago[flagged]
- phendrenad2 5mo agoSure, why not. But if you drop an AI datacenter in the middle of an agricultural area, you won't be able to find it. Because AI datacenters are actually tiny by comparison.
- rvz 5mo agoCryptocurrencies never needed so much data centers as there are many alternatives to the worst one (Bitcoin) that improved their performance and there are environmentally friendly alternatives. LLMs on the other hand have an insatiable requirement for trillions of dollars of data centers, causing memory prices to skyrocket, companies to layoff staff to increase capital expenditure on even more data centers instead of improving the software to run these models. There are no 'environmentally friendly' alternatives to LLMs and this tax tells you everything you need to know why it exists.
- utopiah 5mo agoIs it inherent to the architecture of LLMs/GenAI or rather is it because VCs fund what they can capture and others can't fund?
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo ago[flagged]
- ianm218 5mo agoItalian farmers pay effectively 0% taxes on land and the areas are quite poor. Data centers on the other hand pay lots of taxes. Why would they ban productive uses of land?
- conception 5mo agoObviously because they care more about things than just making money.
- shlant 5mo ago> Obviously because they care more about things than just making money. why should someone be banned from selling their land if they want?
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoThe concept of land ownership is somewhat flawed (how can you "own" something that existed before you and will outlast you) and there's a finite amount of land available for various purposes, so for the benefit of humanity/civilisation it can make sense to ensure that land with certain properties is kept for the purpose of growing food or for hosting particular ecosystems (e.g. rivers). Even if it's not agricultural land, there can be strategically important pieces of land that a country will insist cannot be sold to organisations that are opposed to the values of that country. However, in those cases, it might make more sense for the state to make compulsory purchases of that land.
- conception 5mo agoWelcome to zoning?
- __m 5mo ago[flagged]
- perks_12 5mo agoDatacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction. It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards. Sure, people feel somewhat AI-fatigued, but blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general.
- utopiah 5mo ago[flagged]
- perks_12 5mo agoAI is front and center of any new digital product these days. More and more tedious tasks are automated using agents, even in small businesses. Assuming Europe won't invest in datacenters, eventually it will find itself in a position where it is completely dependent on US and Chinese companies providing the core to such solutions to them. This will eventually lead to a situation where more and more value creation will flow towards these economies.
- jjj123 5mo agoBut in this case what does a country lose by blocking any and all data centers in its borders? A few ms latency?
- perks_12 5mo agoYou are assuming friendly and equal terms for all customers. What if Trump decides there should be 50% tariffs on tokens? Or what if certain use cases get blocked by OpenAI because they do not fit their worldview? Is it clever to implement AI in every step of the economy without the ability to self-host?
- rvz 5mo ago> But blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general. Maybe find scalable alternatives or software optimizations that do not require the worlds energy or building even more data centers everywhere and further burning up the planet?
- re-thc 5mo ago> built in green/agricultural areas So they want them in other areas instead? Like next to residential area? I'm not sure they understand the implications...
- utopiah 5mo agoJust had to read few more paragraphs : "the use of disused former industrial areas is favoured. In this case there are no additional burdens, but rather the law proposes bureaucratic simplifications." It's even in bold "the use of disused former industrial areas"
- jamespo 5mo agoPerhaps an AI summary would have helped here
- john_strinlai 5mo ago>Like next to residential area? or... industrial areas?
- oersted 5mo agoIndeed, I don't quite understand the issue. I get that the data centers are big and expensive, but they must be nothing compared to any ordinary heavy-industry site right? In all aspects: space, pollution, energy, water...
- napolux 5mo agoold industrial areas, which sometimes are pretty far from residential ones
- PowerElectronix 5mo agoWho needs computers, anyways
- amluto 5mo agoTo me, datacenters, especially for AI (which tolerates an extra hundred ms of latency quite well) seem like an unusual form of development. Many forms of development have similar downsides: they destroy green space, they can be noisy, they compete for energy resources [0], etc. On the flip side, though, most new developments add substantial value: jobs, tax revenue, increased industry around them, local availability of their outputs, etc. Datacenters are weird: they come with the negatives (although, per unit energy consumption, they’re relatively innocuous), but they seem to be missing most of the regional benefits. They don’t create many jobs. They pay little in taxes. They don’t actually produce anything that makes anyone else want to further develop the surrounding area. Their outputs offer little benefit to the community that wouldn’t be provided nearly as well by a datacenter somewhere else. So I actually get why it makes sense to support development but oppose new datacenters. Or to have an added tax on datacenters so that at least some economic benefit is captured. As an interesting contrast, a colo facility is a bit different: I want to have colo datacenters near by so that I can use their services. But this isn’t what the new development is about. [0] Some of which are finite in a given region or are preferable not to use. (But don’t forget that more energy use = increased production in the long term, which can be a very good thing.)
- morpheuskafka 5mo agoA warehouse or factory would have more jobs, but would also bring massive truck loads to the local roads and corresponding pollution. The low staffing of datacenters means that one they are built there is little transportation impact.
- dsign 5mo agoI would bet, 55% chance, that in 15 to 20 years that region will be filled with autonomous farms. Companies mostly run by AI, and labored by agricultural bots. Not an outcome that, even then, people will want. But we rarely get what we want.
- notrealyme123 5mo agoThat's very close to a coin flip.
- jayGlow 5mo agoI thought we wanted robots to take over the boring and back breaking jobs?
- dsign 5mo agoWell, of course. Of note, this region in question has a problem with a dearth of young people and specially young people wanting to take those jobs, and if it voted right-wing and populist, you don't need me to tell you what kind of solutions they don't like to their demographic issue.
- dfxm12 5mo agoMy Italian is not as good as it used to be. Does anyone know what the current tax is? I mean, is this going from 1% -> 2-3%, or is it a more meaningful increase?
- napolux 5mo agoNothing is taxed al 1% in italy, not even basic food (4%)
- Bender 5mo agoI am usually apposed to any tax on anyone or any entity for any reason but I am also jaded after a lifetime of seeing taxes almost entirely go to fraud waste and abuse that only grows with time and very rarely ever shrinks. me and my weird fantasies about implementing the code of bushidō in all governments world wide. This will be an unpopular opinion as I have many but if these taxes are allocated 100% to offsetting taxes and costs for the farmers then I would support it but I am not in Italy so thankfully it does not matter what I or most people think. Farmers have thin margins and have to compensate for weather that they do not control. They are also very under appreciated which is bizarre to me given they provide our food.
- sagarm 5mo agoIsn't there already enough graft directed towards farmers?
- Bender 5mo agoYes and no. There is money allocated to grow specific crops and if it were up to me that would vanish. Farmers would go back to growing what the economy was demanding and not artificially propping up corn for ethanol. I would take vehicles in two directions. EV's where it makes sense and hyper efficient hybrid vehicles that emit clean exhaust and get 150+mpg to fill some EV gaps until battery tech progresses quite a bit more.
- jgbuddy 5mo agoThis is surely a huge blow to all the hyperscalers looking to build datacenters in the agricultural regions of Italy.
- napolux 5mo agoRead the article man, Lombardy is basically in the center of Europe, compare Milan with Los Angeles and see how small it is actually > There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation. If the Milan hinterland is the most 'targeted' area, an increase in interest is also registered in the other provinces: in the rest of Lombardy there are three already active, plus one under construction and five under evaluation.
- jgbuddy 5mo agoAgreed- my comment was tongue-in-cheek.
- zuzululu 5mo agoEU consumers will foot the bill by paying more and lagging behind America
- eur0pa 5mo agoGood.
- epolanski 5mo agoI think that's mostly virtue signaling. Italy isn't a particularly attractive place to run data centers for different reasons, starting from the very high cost of energy.
- j-bos 5mo agoIf they invested a token of the budget into making data centers look beautiful that'd probably reduce the push back by like half.
- lormayna 5mo agoItalian here: as the first reading, I thought it was an usual decision against progress and technology. But reading the article it seems a good sense rule: Lombardy was one of the most industrialized zones of Europe and now is migrating to a post industrial model. This law should force reusing the old and unused industrial spaces instead that wasting space in agricultural areas.
- collabs 5mo agoif we can tolerate latency for AI data centers why not build them in the middle of nowhere with solar panels, huge battery banks, and fiber connections? What am I missing? It is truly doable now though with sodium batteries. It is more expensive sure but it is doable. We need to not subsidize these data centers first though. These things need to pay their full cost including environmental cost.
- latentframe 5mo agoAI infras is starting to run into the same land using and energy also as heavy industries : when the datacenters compete for grid capacity water and industrial land at scale the local governments just stop treating them like just advanced softwares
- pjmlp 5mo agoUnfortunately big tech will just pay it, they should be forbidden in first place.