A blunder by Lelystad local council means the city will be home to a data centre which will use more energy than all local households put together, news website Nu.nl reported on Wednesday.

American data centre giant Equinix gained planning permission for the project in 2021, with just the SP and two local parties voting against.

Councillors were told the centre, to be built at the Flevokust Haven industrial estate, would “not be a huge development”, CDA councillor Jelle Hijmissen told the news platform. According to Hijmissen, he had been given the impression by council officials that energy demand would be limited.

Other councillors also said they had not understood at the time that the planned centee would be one of the most energy-intensive in the country.

In 2022, the Dutch government imposed a moratorium on new data centres, leading to new rules, including limiting energy use to 70 megawatts. The Equinix centre will use 150 megawatts, which, according to the information given to the councillors, would “roughly” equal the energy use of 3,000 to 5,000 households.

However, a calculation by energy expert Enzo Diependaal and requested by Nu.nl showed the true number to be closer to 200,000 households.

“The council has been wrongly informed. The difference is massive. This data centre can be compared to a small city in the Netherlands. Someone should have raised the alarm,” he said.

Max Schulze of technology thinktank Leitmotive, said the impact of the data centre was “wrongly represented” following questions by councillors. If cranked up to maximum capacity, energy use could even reach the equivalent of half a million households, he said.

In a reaction, a council spokesman said the city’s zoning plan “complied with the norms of good planning according to the knowledge and conditions of 2021”.

Amsterdam

A massive new data centre planned for Amsterdam’s western port area will use as much energy as the city of Haarlem, according to research by the NRC and published last month.

The data centre, consisting of three 85 metre high buildings, is being built despite the ban on new data centres within the city boundaries which was introduced because of their demands on the electricity grid.

The Amsterdam data centre can also get round the 2022 national government ban on the development of more “hyperscales”, or very large data centres, for the same reason.

In addition, according to Noord-Holland province, the fact that the project is split into three towers negates objections about the number of hectares it will take up and the total energy usage.