English
Heated public debate erupted in Macedonia after Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski endorsed the construction of data centers in the country – along with additional construction of energy and hydro capacities. SDSM leader Venko Filipe today condemned the idea and pointed to the vote in the town council of the small rural municipality of Pehcevo as evidence that citizens reject this type of development.
Professor Orce Simov, President of the Commission of the Agency for Electronic Communications, noted that the “no” camp is conducting a campaign on social media “which would not exist if there were no data centers”.
A data center actually is a measure of the economic development of a country. This means that the more data centers in a country, the higher the development. For example, the most data centers are in the USA – 4,767, in second place is Great Britain with 569 data centers, then Germany 533, France 393, China 376 and so on, Simov said.
He acknowledged that the data centers are large consumers of energy and generators of heat – which can actually be put to productive use like in Scandinavia.
Let’s see what that means from the perspective of internet services. Can Youtube exist without a data center? The answer is no. Facebook without a data center, also no, Amazon, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, Ali Baba, Temu, electronic banking, digital services, nothing can exist without data centers. ChatGPT also, Claude (Antropic) and many others. The main battle against data centers is being fought on the Internet and social networks that would not exist if there were no data centers. A similar battle was the fight against the 5G networks five years ago, and now we are all using 5G, said Simov.
Simov added that while the AI data centers consume a lot of electricity, they will not consume the energy of the citizens, but will purchase it on energy exchanges.
As for the water consumption, air cooling does not consume waterm, said Simov, while liquid immersion cooling also does not consume water because it is a closed system. Evaporative cooling, consumes water (evaporates into the atmosphere) but it with precipitation returns to the ground. There are several other cooling systems that do not consume water, added the professor.