BRUSSELS, Belgium: The European Commission denied Friday it had copy-pasted from proposals by tech industry lobbyists in adopting rules allowing data centres to keep their environmental impact secret.
A press investigation alleged Brussels had added a confidentiality clause to a review of energy efficiency rules after pressure from Microsoft and DigitalEurope, a lobby whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta. “We reject the accusation of ad verbatim copy-pasting of industry lobbying,” said commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen. The commission moved to regulate the fast-growing data centre sector in 2023 requiring operators to submit data on energy consumption, water usage and other metrics -- and later said this would be published in aggregated form.
But in 2024 it took up a submission by tech companies requiring all individual information on data centres be classified, according to an investigation led by Investigate Europe, a journalism cooperative, in partnership with The Guardian, Le Monde and other media.
As a consequence, information on the precise impact of individual data centres is kept from the public even if demanded through freedom of information requests -- in a possible breach of EU transparency rules, the report said.
