The AI boom is consuming colossal amounts of resources, yet European Union citizens will not find out exactly how much power and water individual data centers use. The EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive, which initially mandated full transparency, was drastically altered following pressure from American lobbyists.
During the early legislative phases in 2024, representatives from Microsoft and DigitalEurope – an industry group counting Amazon, Google, and Meta among its members – pushed through amendments requiring the operational metrics of individual facilities to be treated as protected trade secrets. The European Commission adopted these demands almost word for word. As a result, researchers and the public now only have access to heavily aggregated, national-level statistics, making it entirely impossible to gauge the impact of specific server farms on the local environment.
This situation is facing fierce opposition from academic and legal circles. Scientists point out that classifying the data is a deliberate move to block independent verification. Alex de Vries-Gao, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam focused on quantifying the AI carbon footprint, states bluntly that the industry has “a real interest in keeping the numbers hidden,” adding that currently, “public information is extremely limited.“
Legal experts are attacking the very foundations of the new directive. Kristina Irion, an associate professor of information law at the University of Amsterdam, argues that the “sweeping presumption of confidentiality” applied in the EU regulations unlawfully prioritizes corporate interests over the public’s right to know. Experts also note a clear shift in the behavior of IT giants over recent years: “Where the industry was previously outspoken in its support for clean energy and emissions reductions, many firms have since fallen silent. Instead, they appear to be prioritising the rapid build-out of datacentre infrastructure globally over supporting clean energy and rapid emissions reductions.”
The tech sector consistently defends the secrecy clauses, citing them as a market necessity. A Microsoft spokesperson briefly addressed the issue, maintaining the giants’ ongoing line of defense: “We are taking further steps to increase openness, while protecting confidential business information.“
We are truly living in an era of explosive computing infrastructure expansion, verifying the tech industry’s “green” promises and the constant pressure from the lobbyists.