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While this outcome isn't best for the economy, it is a good solution for the environment, and perhaps that was the goal of the Netherlands.

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The municipality abused the subsidy to lure in a corporation instead of using it to power homes. It would've been better for the environment if Microsoft paid full dime for their own windmills and the subsidy was spent on something that actually reduced greenhouse gases.

500 mil$ to get a 2 bil euro datacenter.

The datacente will then create revenue through services and add jobs. Jobs wont be just employees, you're going to have security, shipping, power plant jobs, recycling servers, etc.

It also seems that they'll get some energy from datacenter heat back plus greenhouse heat... so a nice opportunity to do research and create bleeding edge facilities.

It's also credits, as in Microsoft first invests and then gets free electricity for a while...

Then there's a nice national security benefit having datacenter in your country.

So overall a good deal...

I suppose it is, still it's an abuse of the subsidy. They should have found some other way to give Microsoft 500 million. This way it's literally stealing from a fund that's meant to save the environment.

How is that a better solution for the environment than using the windmills to power homes?

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