Residents Near Warsaw and in Bielsko-Biała Protest AI Data Centers

The AI-driven data center boom has reached Poland, and it's already triggering the same kind of resistance seen earlier in the United States and Ireland. In Reguły near Warsaw, nearly a thousand residents have signed a petition against a planned investment, while in Bielsko-Biała a local group is organizing a resident meeting over a data center planned for the site of the former Fiat factory.

What's Happening in Reguły

The American company Hillwood, previously known for building warehouse and production facilities, is planning one of the largest data centers in Poland in Reguły. The 23-hectare site sits between Aleje Jerozolimskie, Słoneczna Street and Regulska Street, directly adjacent to single-family housing.

The scale of the investment far exceeds typical domestic projects, which usually fall in the 10-40 MW range. The project has been split into four separate investments, each with its own environmental impact assessment procedure, something residents see as an attempt to avoid a full, combined assessment of the entire undertaking's effects.

According to calculations cited by local media, the center's annual energy consumption would reach 1.46 million MWh, roughly what the entire city of Bydgoszcz, with 340,000 residents, consumes. Cooling the servers would require 334,000 cubic meters of water a year, equivalent to the needs of 7,700 residents. The site would also host 3,600 cubic meters of diesel storage tanks for backup generators, seven times the combined tank capacity of nearby gas stations.

Dispute Over Distance From Homes

The biggest controversy concerns the proximity to residential housing. The nearest single-family homes would stand just 30 meters from the data center halls, which residents say would expose them to constant noise from generators and cooling systems running around the clock, as well as light pollution.

The developer expressed surprise that the nearest buildings are just 30 meters away, but didn't see it as a problem - Instytut Spraw Obywatelskich (Institute of Civic Affairs), consultation report

Another point of contention is the size of the planned buildings. The local zoning plan allows building sides of up to 100 meters, yet the project envisions structures with sides of 55, 140, 145 and 232 meters, three of which exceed the permitted limits. A formal environmental decision has still not been issued, even though the procedure began before the last local government elections.

Several local council members have also voiced opposition to the investment. Residents organized around the Aktywni Sąsiedzi (Active Neighbors) association collected nearly a thousand signatures for their petition and openly question the project's naming.

The name 'Data Center' is a wolf in sheep's clothing - Reguły residents quoted in local media

Bielsko-Biała and a Wider Trend

A similar conflict is brewing in Bielsko-Biała, where DL Invest Group, a company from Katowice, working with Boosteroid and Argentum AI, is planning a data center on the site of the former Fiat factory. The facility's starting capacity is set at 50 MW, with room to expand to 200-300 MW, and the estimated value of the entire investment exceeds 9 billion zloty.

The local group Zielona Gwiazda (Green Star) organized an information meeting for residents, challenging the developer's assurances about clean-energy power supply. Activists argue that even large solar farms cannot reliably deliver such enormous amounts of electricity at all times, and consider the environmental promises an example of greenwashing.

The projects in Reguły and Bielsko-Biała are not isolated cases. Similar disputes are already unfolding around planned data centers in Kajetany and Jawczyce near Warsaw, though in the latter case it is still too early to speak of an organized resident protest.

What It Means for Poland

Poland is only beginning to experience the tensions that have been blocking tens of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure investment in the United States and the United Kingdom for months. Until now, domestic data centers rarely exceeded 40 MW, so projects on the order of 130 or 300 MW represent a qualitative shift in energy and water demand for municipalities that previously never had to contend with this kind of investment pressure.

For local governments, the key question is whether existing zoning plans and environmental procedures can keep pace with the scale and speed at which tech companies and the investors leasing them space are seeking sites for new server farms. The dispute over splitting large projects into smaller stages with separate environmental assessments, as in Reguły, could become a pattern repeated in other municipalities.