What are the political ecologies of data centers in times of environmental crisis? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the Icelandic data center industry, this talk will address how the relationship between digital and energy infrastructures shapes corporate sustainability, materialities and limits of computation. Over the last two decades, data centers expanded in Iceland powered by abundant and inexpensive hydro and geothermal electricity, and cool climate – perks of Icelandic infrastructures that are strategically used to portrait the sub-arctic island as the ‘natural fit’ (Johnson 2023) for data and sustainability. Today, the industry scores the second highest rates of electricity consumption in the country – only behind aluminum smelters – and is expected to double its size in the next decades to absorb new demand for generative AI. At the same time, droughts affect the main reservoirs of hydropower plants, constraining the electricity generation in the island, and shifting imaginaries from abundancy to scarcity. Ultimately, this talk articulates the entanglements of state, corporations and the environment within forms of extractivism enabled by digital technologies and their infrastructures.

Details: June 24 12.00-14.00 at the University of Amsterdam. Please register here and we will send you the details.

About the speaker
Felipe Silva Figueiredo is a visiting researcher at the critical infrastructure lab. he is a phd student at the it university of copenhagen, in denmark. he has background in anthropology and science and technology studies. felipe’s current phd research focuses on the political ecology of data centers and energy infrastructures in iceland, and how electricity shapes the sustainability and the limits of computation. his general interests lie in the intersection between infrastructure development and environmental crisis, and ways of resisting capitalism.