EU pressures Big Tech to go green with new data center sustainability label

Por Zia Weise — Sustainability – POLITICO

BRUSSELS — Brussels on Monday unveiled an environmental rating scheme for data centers that power artificial intelligence, a move the EU’s energy chief described as the first step in pressuring tech giants into aligning with the continent’s climate efforts.

The new rules, which will apply from August 2027, oblige big data centers to display a label grading them on their energy efficiency, water usage and clean power uptake on a scale of A to G, much like the EU’s influential appliances ranking.

“This will add a lot of transparency and hopefully provide the incentives for these data centers to be as sustainable as possible,” said Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen in an interview with POLITICO ahead of the label’s presentation. 

The new label is optional for smaller data centers, “but later we are also going to introduce minimum performance standards which, of course, will put more pressure on those who may not voluntarily wish to be as sustainable as we want them to,” he added. 

While Australia and Singapore already have schemes rating the energy efficiency of data centers, the Commission’s new label would be the most comprehensive worldwide — asking tech companies to be transparent not only about their power use but also their impact on the local and global environment via information on how much water they consume, how clean their electricity is, whether they reuse the heat they generate and more.

The EU executive’s performance standards, which the Commission wants to present in spring 2027, are expected to tighten the screws by setting mandatory sustainability thresholds for newly built or retrofitted data centers.

Those two initiatives are an attempt at ensuring the European Union can compete in the artificial intelligence race without sacrificing its commitment to climate neutrality in 2050, Jørgensen said. 

“We need to deal with this in a way that data centers in the future are not something that will hurt our energy systems, and thereby our competitiveness and capabilities of decarbonizing and making sure we have security of supply for our citizens,” he said. 

“If we do not make sure that these big power consumers are indeed in line with our overall objectives… then they will risk undermining our ability to live up to our own targets,” Jørgensen warned. Data centers are already hoovering up 2.5% of the bloc’s electricity use, a share expected to double in the coming years, he noted. “We’re looking at a huge change.”

Monday’s announcement is a delegated regulation, meaning that it can take effect without the input of EU governments and the European Parliament. The two institutions have two months to object to the regulation, however.

The label will be generated automatically each year from figures companies are already required to report under the bloc’s energy efficiency rules, though an accompanying Commission report acknowledges that compliance with those rules is low: Only 36% of sites in the EU disclose required data.

Go green, get popular

Data center operators have lobbied against the Commission’s plans. The European Data Center Association in April warned that the requirements would kill investment and in June insisted that the bloc must prioritize AI ambitions over its climate goals.

Earlier this year, a Commission document seen by POLITICO indicated that around 20 percent of Europe’s data centers could land at the bottom of the new rating scheme.

But Jørgensen urged tech companies to view EU efforts to regulate their environmental impact as an “opportunity” that could help them win over a skeptical public. 

In the United States, a backlash is mounting against AI infrastructure, in part over its voracious appetite for energy and water. Similar protests are starting to emerge in Europe. 

“We do see some places where public opinion is maybe turning a little bit against these data centers, we’ve seen it in some places in Europe and we see it even more so in the United States of America,” said Jørgensen. “So I firmly believe that it’s also in the interest of the data centers to be able to show how sustainable they are.” 

But he indicated that the EU would not impose bloc-wide rules requiring data center operators to provide their own clean energy, something his Commission colleague Teresa Ribera advocated for in a recent interview with POLITICO. 

“This will always be a national decision,” he said. 

Still, government efforts such as Spain’s recent move toward forcing data centers to provide a share of their own renewable power are “a part of the solution in many places, because the consumption of these data centers will be so big,” he added. 

Overall, Jørgensen said, the EU wants to avoid developments such as in the U.S., where data centers are increasing the demand for polluting fossil fuels. 

“My overall message to the Big Tech sector is: We want AI, of course, we want data centers, we want Europe to be a place for investments, but it’s in the interest of them and of the European Union that we do it in a way that is sustainable,” he said. “And we will be setting demands for them.” 

Fonte: Sustainability – POLITICO