Microsoft and other US tech companies got exactly what they wanted from the EU: a confidentiality clause that keeps individual datacentre emissions hidden from the public. The provision, adopted nearly word-for-word from industry demands during 2024 consultations, blocks researchers, journalists, and citizens from seeing pollution data for specific facilities. Freedom of information requests won't work either. The data is locked down.
The lobbying coalition included Microsoft, DigitalEurope (whose members include Google, Amazon, and Meta), and Video Games Europe. Their argument was commercial interests. The result is that only national-level summaries of energy footprints are available, making it impossible to scrutinize which datacentres are the worst offenders. A senior commission official has already reminded national authorities to keep everything confidential, noting that all media and public requests for access have been refused so far.
The AI boom is driving a massive datacentre expansion across Europe, with the EU aiming to triple capacity in five to seven years to compete globally. These facilities need enormous amounts of power, and it's increasingly coming from fossil gas.
Legal experts say the secrecy clause may violate the Aarhus convention on public access to environmental information. Prof. Jerzy Jendrośka, who spent 19 years on the body overseeing the convention, said he couldn't recall a comparable case in two decades. Ben Youriev, a researcher at InfluenceMap, told The Guardian that tech firms now "appear to be prioritising the rapid build-out of datacentre infrastructure globally over supporting clean energy and rapid emissions reductions." Microsoft, for its part, says it "supports greater transparency" while also protecting "confidential business information." The EU plans a second phase of regulation that would publish sustainability scores, but the majority of what operators report would still remain secret.