US data center in Beringen, Switzerland meets protest camp in Tengen, Germany

STACK Infrastructure, a US company, is constructing a large colocation data centre in Beringen, canton Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The facility is projected to consume about 350 GWh of electricity per year – roughly 75 % of the canton’s total demand – and use 55 000 m³ of water annually, while generating around 80 GWh of waste heat that cannot be economically reused.

The activist group “Aufstände der Allmende” set up a protest camp in the German town of Tengen after being denied a site in Benken, Zurich, and after the police dismantled their camp there in early July. From the German side they held workshops, talks and concerts before dismantling the camp without incident on 10 July 2026. The protesters denounce the data centre as a symbol of unchecked AI expansion, citing its high energy and water consumption and the risk of turning the Schaffhausen region into a data‑centre hotspot.

The protest prompted a parliamentary inquiry in the Schaffhausen cantonal council into the police’s removal of the original camp and raised broader questions about the sustainability of large‑scale data‑centre projects in the area.