How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

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ccyberlimerence about 5 hours ago 32 commentsRead Article on investigate-europe.eu

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jimnotgym•about 3 hours ago

I have complete confidence the EU will realise this may violate transparency laws, it will go to court in 7-8 years, publish a response in the next 5 finally getting this law fixed in about 2040. They always get these things right, in the end

blitzar•about 2 hours ago

I forget, am i meant to be shaking with rage that the EU have regulations OR that the regulations include disclosure carveouts?

TeMPOraL•about 2 hours ago

You're supposed to go blind with rage after "the EU".

Artoooooor•about 2 hours ago

Of course, transparency for thee but not for me.

rceDia•43 minutes ago

Data centers are uber resource hogs: land, water, power. They compete for the same resources as other industries but also against the local citizenry. Who benefits from mass consumption of the resources and at what cost. Age old debate.

jeffbee•35 minutes ago

Have you always had similar things to say about the paper industry?

moi2388•8 minutes ago

Yes

postepowanieadm•about 1 hour ago

EU has a really big problem with lobbing/corruption. Qatargate, russian connections, von der Leyen–Pfizer affair.

snarf21•39 minutes ago

It isn't just the EU. Anytime $1M in lobbying will buy you $1B in contracts or regulatory capture, it will always be a no brainer. We need better transparency about the money trail and full disclosure before things go to vote so the public can weigh in.

nDRDY•about 2 hours ago

I wonder if this is less about the environmental impact (which can be greenwashed as necessary), and more about the power consumption of individual data centres.

jve•about 2 hours ago

Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage. And then there is a PUE ratio which indicates how much power is to be used by feeding the equipment vs overall usage for supporting equipment (cooling).

Just this week we launched a datacenter hat runs 100% on renewable energy even in case when diesel engines have to turn on and seeking LEED certification: https://delska.com/about/news-resources/delska-newsroom/dels... - the available energy to the DC is always trumpeted in topic. Yeah, we are kind of proud of technical achievements and efficiency achieved.

But we have the luxury as being slightly nordic, not needing to consume water for cooling. And what is not widespread but taking effect is that datacenters are able to give the heat for useful purposes like heating homes. It needs datacenter to be in city and cooperation for gov agencies, but this is the path that is being taken across countries: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/06/sustainable-data-cen...

nDRDY•about 2 hours ago

>Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage

Exactly - would be nice if that information was public knowledge!

lwhi•about 2 hours ago

I imagine they want to ensure that the consumption data can't be used to reverse engineer technical information relating to each specific centre.

johndunne•about 3 hours ago

I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder. It breaks the link between people and matters that concern society (like the environment, in the case of this article). In the drive to increase profit, individual legislators can be convinced to tweak a law or two for 'greater economic growth' somewhere. Over the decades, the effect is a shift in political power away from the people and into industry and ultimately into the hands of a few. I've come to think that this is what we're witnessing in the US. While we're not looking, the landscape is changing behind the scenes. Bram Vranken's quote from the article is poignant: 'Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?' I often wonder what can be done by us (i.e. all people) to push back and it mostly requires a lot of effort from everyone; participation in Democracy.

TeMPOraL•about 1 hour ago

No fiduciary responsibility needed, democracy alone is enough to encourage corruption.

For example, a company decision-maker responsible for picking the city/county/country in which their company will put a new factory is in position of great influence on municipal/regional/national level politics - simply because the people want jobs, and politicians want to be popular with the people.

latexr•about 1 hour ago

> simply because the people want jobs

To be more precise, the people want to live within a certain standard. I can’t think of anyone¹ who really wants a job. Purpose, something to do, money (which translates to standard of living), recognition, sure, but those don’t really necessitate a job, as in something you have to do on the regular to be able to survive through the indirection of money.

The distinction is important because those who have the power you described are also the ones who have the biggest incentive to perpetuate this notion that everyone needs a job and that there’s no other way the system could work. Thus, by framing it in the context of jobs we’re discussing on their terms and have already lost.

¹ For sure there’ll be someone, but not enough to be meaningful.

kvgr•about 2 hours ago

The issue is corruption and it is in capitalism, socialism and communism. Corruption is everywhere all the time. Capitalism is just redistribution of resources. There is also redistribution of resources in communism and there the corruption i would say is even bigger. Less in amount for one specific person, but spread out throught society that it rots from inside.

billynomates•about 1 hour ago

Capitalism is not the redistribution of resources. It is an economic system in which the means of production are owned by private owners, as opposed to collectively.

In theory, full communism prevents corruption by removing its structural causes rather than relying on laws or moral exhortation. And since corruption under capitalism (in Marxist analysis) stems from private ownership, class divisions, and the scramble for scarce resources, abolishing those conditions should eliminate the incentives that drive people to exploit positions of power for personal gain. Without private property to accumulate or a state apparatus to capture, the reasoning goes, there would simply be nothing left to be corrupt about.

Isamu•about 1 hour ago

>Without private property to accumulate or a state apparatus to capture, the reasoning goes, there would simply be nothing left to be corrupt about.

Right, it becomes mostly the corruption of power, and the lengths people will go to in order to retain it. It’s astonishing that is not recognized as a problem.

direwolf20•about 3 hours ago

This isn't solely due to shareholder fiduciary duty. Even without such a duty, the shareholders would fire anyone who doesn't put them first. Even without shares, a sole owner of a company would also do that. No matter your position, you don't get to do things that are bad for your boss, so the ultimate bosses (whoever they are in a given system) hold all the power.

And power has a tendency to accumulate. Powerful people always use their power to increase their power. There are no exceptions.

wongarsu•about 2 hours ago

Fiduciary duty effectively turns profit maximization into the only valid goal. Companies with sole owners or family businesses tend to have much more diverse goals. Many of Europe's large companies are still private (certainly more so than in the US), and from the ones I've personally dealt with the image of the founder/owner/family is often a driving concern. That can materialize as better business practices, or as a ruthless business that reinvests a notable part of profits in projects with public benefit, usually locally wherever they are headquartered.

Other examples in the US would include SpaceX, which supposedly is not about profit but about building a mars colony (and so far their actions seem to align with that), or Rupert Murdoch's media empire that's at least as much about spreading right wing views in the anglosphere as it is about money.

tgv•about 2 hours ago

That's an Ayn Rand type black and white view of society. Not so long ago, companies were supposed to (and many did) care for continuity, in a broad sense: survival, labor, customer, and product. Nowadays, you would add environment too. Shares were a way of getting more interest than a savings account. Heck, there were even cooperations in which the laborers were shareholders as well.

The word you are looking for is greed.

TeMPOraL•about 1 hour ago

Corporations do care for survival and continuity - of themselves. Not the people, not even people working in them or running them - just themselves.

stingraycharles•about 2 hours ago

> I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder.

That’s not the least of my concerns. My problem with capitalism is its desire to influence politics in its favor, and the utter lack of regulation amongst politicians (ie self regulation) to forbid this practice.

The whole industry of lobbying should not be allowed to exist.

thfuran•about 2 hours ago

Lobbying must be allowed to exist. You bringing issues to the attention of your representative or asking them to change some policy is lobbying. It is even very useful to allow organizations to lobby politicians. For example, I want EFF to be able to lobby politicians about things I don't have the time or influence to really push for political change on. I do wonder how we could effectively restrict corporate lobbying in that context. Maybe there could be a special type of charitable nonprofit that is more restricted, such as only being allowed to accept funding from individuals rather than corporations and then deny lobbying rights to anyone acting as agent of any organization other than one of that sort? But I think we're very far from a political environment in the US in which any constitutional amendment restricting personal rights in the political process would end well.

Neikius•4 minutes ago

Well lobbying is ok. Bribing is not.

I guess we need to pay politicians enough. And have very very strict checks on their wealth. Maybe even only pick people with no families and don't allow them property. That would essentially eliminate bribery. Question is what else would it do... Nothing is so simple in the end.

But yes any such system has to be very simple at it's core.

_ache_•about 3 hours ago

A french article on the same subject, but paywalled.

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2026/04/17/comm...

stingraycharles•about 2 hours ago

That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for here.

jeffbee•about 1 hour ago

Can anyone name any other industry that is as open and transparent about power and water usage as the IT industry? How much energy does your local oil refinery, metal smelter, borax plant use?

Large data center operators are already far more transparent with their annual reports than any other industry.