Silent Power Guzzlers: Switzerland's Booming Data Centres

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Data centres are popping up across Switzerland, driven in part by the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI). But it comes at a cost: higher water consumption, the soaring use of electricity and the waste of heat left unused. By 2030, such centres could consume up to 15% of the country's total electricity, writes Swiss public broadcaster, SRF. This content was published on July 25, 2025 - 09:00 10 minutes Tamara Keller, Julian Schmidli and Pascal Albisser, SRF

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In Dielsdorf, a village in canton Zurich which was once shaped by agriculture, farmland has shrunk by nearly a fifth in the past 40 years. But the most dramatic transformation has happened over the past four years. Fields once used to grow crops are now home to giant servers powering the data economy.

In 2023, Green, one of Switzerland's biggest digital service providers, launched its first high-performance data centre in Dielsdorf. Two others are currently under construction.

The three data centres are expected to produce a total capacity of 35 megawatts. Once up and running in 2026, they will consume seven times more electricity than the rest of the municipality of Dielsdorf, or around a tenth of the entire city of Zurich.

To make sure the servers will get the power they need, canton Zurich's utility company EKZ is constructing a new substation on the campus grounds.

Before (2020) and after (2025): view of the site where the Green campus is being built in Dielsdorf. The three new high-performance data centres are circled in red, the new transformer station in blue.

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Thanks to its flat topography and vast size, the site in Dielsdorf offers perfect conditions for constructing such data centres. Its proximity to Zurich, home to many companies in the finance and service sectors, also makes it a strategic location.

However, Dielsdorf is no isolated case. Almost a dozen powerful data centres have recently been built or are due to open in the next few years in Switzerland.

A world without data centres has become unthinkable. These giant buildings filled with high-performance computers, which require complex maintenance and cooling, control much of what we do online.

The surge of AI tools such as ChatGPT has only intensified the appetite for computing power.

AI guzzles significantly more power, and it's not only popular with private users. Many companies now rely on AI for data analysis, trend forecasts, personalised recommendations and advertising.

The number of companies renting space in Swiss data centres to use part of the servers is constantly on the rise. Among them are Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Microsoft recently announced plans to invest $400 million (CHF320 million) in Swiss data centres for cloud computing and AI.

Watch the report by the SRF news programme“10 vor 10” from June 24, 2025 here (in German):

External Content Up to 15% of electricity consumption by 2030

The latest developments have a significant impact on the landscape and energy infrastructure. According to a study by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts on behalf of the Federal Office of Energy, data centres in Switzerland used around 2.1 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2019, which is about 3.6% of the country's total power consumption.

Adrian Altenburger, author of the study and professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, told SRF that data centres currently use between 6% and 8% of Switzerland's electricity. If the country's total consumption remains as it is, this could rise to as much as 15% by 2030 – more than the entire canton of Zurich consumed in 2023.

Precise information on data centres is often not provided. By mapping more than 120 data centres, specialists at SRF Data have shed light on this booming industry for the first time.

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You can find the full (German) version of SRF's extensive multimedia feature here External lin .

The findings reveal that data centres are most likely to be built in places which offer the best conditions for digital infrastructure.

Sophisticated fibre-optic networks (green areas on the map) and high-voltage electricity grids (yellow lines on the map above) are key factors when choosing the right location for a data centre.

Central Switzerland, urban areas sauch as Geneva and Zurich, and the“Star of Laufenburg”, which is a major node in the European power grid where construction of the world's largest battery began in early May, all offer ideal conditions.

Despite the growing appetite for power, Altenburger says there is currently no risk of the electricity grid buckling under the pressure.

But he also cannot rule out a scenario similar to what happened in Greater Dublin where a moratorium on new data centres has been decreed until 2028. In 2023, Ireland's data centres consumed nearly 21% of the country's total power.

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