As Europe expands its data centre footprint over the coming years, EU policymakers are looking to establish new transparency measures on the amount of water and energy that these crucial IT facilities consume.
The European Commission has today (21 September) advanced a delegated regulation which would establish a common rating scheme for data centres with capacities above 500 kW.
"Understanding their energy and resource consumption is the essential first step towards integrating them sustainably into our energy system," Energy and Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen stated. "Digital sovereignty must go hand in hand with energy responsibility."
Under the proposal, data centres would be required to display a label with a score (A-G) for their energy efficiency and water usage effectiveness. These labels would be generated through a centralised database, using information that operators are already obliged to report.
Regulation introduced in 2024 requires datacentre operators to provide KPIs on their total energy consumption, total water input, waste heat reused, power usage effectiveness, water usage effectiveness, energy reuse and renewable energy use.
This information is provided confidentially and is aggregated through the database to provide national and EU-level statistics on the number of datacentres operating and the amount of resources they consume.
A Commission assessment of the first year of reporting found that only 36% of in-scope facilities in EU member states disclosed the required KPIs on energy and water usage.
It anticipates an increase in the number of data submissions over the coming years as “awareness on the reporting scheme is growing, and operators have had time to adapt to the new regulatory processes”.
However, the assessment also calls for a “swift and full implementation” of the regulatory requirements into national frameworks and urges operators to comply with the disclosure requirements in full.
Announcing the new rating regime, the Commission cited the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) projection that data centres electricity demand will double in the EU by 2030, driven primarily by developments in AI technologies. The IEA also predicts that these facilities will account for 3% of the bloc’s total energy demand.
Earlier this year, the EU announced the European Technological Sovereignty Package, which sets out a range of measures to bolster AI and cloud computing capacity. This includes the explicit aim of tripling the datacentre capacity within Europe over the next five to seven years.
Teresa Ribera, Commissioner for Competition, argued: “Tripling our data centre capacity cannot mean tripling the pressure on our grids, our water and our energy bills.”
“That starts with transparency, rating large data centres depending on their impact on our energy system,” she continued. “Efficient, flexible, powered by additional clean energy and reusing waste heat, this is how data centres become an asset for EU’s energy transition."
In its announcement, the Commission argues that well-designed datacentres can “help lower the overall cost of the electricity system, improve grid stability, and integrate more renewable energy”. As an example, it notes that reusing half of the overall waste heat from European datacentres would equate to the total heating demand of 4m households.
Industry bodies have been quick to push back against the proposal. The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) Europe argued that applying the same labelling criteria to data centres in Finland and southern Spain ignores the different climates and operating conditions.
CCIA Europe Policy manager Leonardo Veneziani said the result would be "distorted metrics that undermine the scheme's credibility", and warned it could drive investment out of the EU thereby undermining the bloc’s competitiveness.
The delegated regulation is now subject to a two-month scrutiny period in both the European Parliament and the Council before it enters into force. The co-legislators can object to the proposals in this time but may not propose changes to the text.
From next year, the first data centre sustainability labels are expected to be displayed, and the scheme will be subject to a review by the end of 2028.
Beyond transparency and labelling, the Commission has launched a consultation on introducing minimum performance standards for datacentres, which is open until 14 December.
