Water & Electricity: Data Centres Are Booming, Households Are Paying

Following the presentation of the European Commission’s Tech Sovereignty Package, Jutta Paulus, environment spokesperson for the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, states:

“Data centres are true energy and water guzzlers. With the rapid growth of artificial intelligence, their resource consumption will continue to rise sharply, increasingly at the expense of private households. It is alarming that the data boom driven by tech giants in Ireland is already adding hundreds of euros in additional costs to household energy bills. We therefore urgently need clear rules to ensure greater efficiency and transparency. It is frankly outrageous that data on electricity and water consumption is casually classified as a trade secret by tech companies.

This is why the long-overdue EU label is urgently needed: one that clearly identifies which data centres use energy and water efficiently and actively support the expansion of renewable energy. The European Commission is falling behind its own commitments because of internal disagreements within the Commission. For me, one thing is clear: “clean” electricity from ageing nuclear power plants has no place in an efficiency label for data centres, that would be greenwashing in its purest form. Consumers ultimately foot the bill because higher demand means higher electricity prices. While new wind and solar farms can be built relatively quickly, the nuclear industry works on timescales measured in decades. And nuclear power plants are also extremely water-intensive.

Europe needs less waste, not more greenwashing. The Commission must comply with its own legislation and act now to ensure that the rampant resource consumption of data centres is effectively limited.”