The government is concerned about our energy consumption, yet at the same time it is allowing more and more power-hungry data centres to be built and is not requiring homeowners to insulate their properties. That is strange, argues columnist Marcel Möring.

These are the coldest days of February and here, on the top floor of this building constructed in 1830, it took the central heating four hours to warm the house from 17 degrees to a mild 17.5. In the 1830s, the affluent residents of this building would sit cosily around the stove whilst the staff brought round hot chocolate and asked if there was anything else they could do.

I, a poor labourer in the arts, sit typing with cold hands and drinking coffee that has already gone cold before it reaches my desk. ‘It’s a battle in the marshes,’ the father of my first girlfriend used to say. And so it is.

Last year, I stuffed strands of sheep’s wool into the cracks, fitted fan strips under the radiators to push the warm air upwards, and bought a small fan heater to keep my legs warm. It helps a little, but as a tenant, there’s little you can do about a house with hardly any insulation. Knowing that things are worse in Ukraine, I refrain from complaining too much. I’d love to send my fan heater over there and manage without it myself, but I fear I’d have to supply a generator as well.

I wonder what kind of compelling story we find ourselves in these days

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I think about Ukraine every day, but the country is rarely out of my mind. There, far away, they are fighting not only for their own survival, but also to defend our external borders. If Ukraine falls, Europe will be shaken to its very foundations. We have got to know Mr Putin a little over the past few years, and we know that his thirst for power knows no bounds. The same applies to his counterpart on the other side of the world.

We, in Europe, are caught in the middle, like Baron von Münchhausen, who is beset by a lion in front of him and, as if that were not enough, a crocodile behind him. Just as the lion pounces on him, the baron dives to the ground and, whoops, there goes the lion into the crocodile’s wide-open jaws. With von Münchhausen, everything always turns out all right. That’s the nature of tall tales. I wonder which tale we find ourselves in these days.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here in the warm airflow from my fan heater, thinking about what else I, as a tenant, can do to insulate this old house better. Not much, I’m afraid. The owner of the property could do all sorts of things, but for financial reasons, they’re not particularly keen on the idea.

It’s strange that the government is concerned about our energy consumption, yet at the same time allows more and more power-hungry data centres to be built and doesn’t force homeowners to insulate their properties. All those poorly insulated houses combined are a drain on our energy supply. ‘Heating with the windows open,’ as my mother would say.

According to the newspapers, the three new data centres that Microsoft is building in Amsterdam consume roughly as much electricity as ‘a small town’. I’m not sure what to picture when I think of a small town. Groningen? Enschede? Or are those just a bit too big? The smallest town in the Netherlands is Staverden in Gelderland: five inhabitants. That seems too small to me. It’s an irritating habit to express measurements in terms of so many football pitches or Olympic-sized swimming pools, three times round the world or from here to the moon and back. We want numbers. Precision. To measure is to know. Which small town is Microsoft guzzling the electricity from?

You’d expect the government to require a company that consumes so much energy to provide compensation in the form of wind turbines, solar panels or some other form of energy generation. I haven’t yet read anything to suggest that Microsoft is giving anything back in return for our electrical hospitality. Perhaps it could install power generators in a small town where the women can no longer blow-dry their hair and the men can no longer shave because their electricity is disappearing into Microsoft’s cloud.

Meanwhile, the clouds have cleared here and the sun has come out. The temperature indoors is slowly rising to 18 degrees Celsius. My neighbour at the back, who runs a small landscaping business, will be pleased about that. He’s covered the roof of his workshop with solar panels. I wonder if they have those in Ukraine. Probably not. Apart from free sunlight, something else is falling from the sky there.

Text: Marcel Möring. His novella *Kleurentovenaar* was recently published .
Photo: Harry Cock