Skip to main content

The EU will force data centers to disclose how much water and energy they are using

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support
  • Data centers will get a label, just like your fridge or dishwasher
  • Energy and water consumption must be reported by 500kW+ sites
  • The EC also wants to know how resources are being balanced in relation to local strains

The European Commission has proposed a new rating scheme for data centers in a bid to have them report metrics like energy efficiency and water consumption more transparently.

Upcoming changes fall under the new Data Center Energy Efficiency Package, which introduces a new common, EU-wide rating scheme much like what we're already familiar with for household appliances.

Crucially, the changes now affect smaller campuses with a power demand of at least 500kW, whereas only much larger sites were impacted before the new rules.

European data centers must report efficiency statistics more openly

Some of the new metrics include total energy and water consumption, Power Usage Effectiveness (a figure we're already familiar with in hyperscalers' annual sustainability reports), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), how much of their energy comes from renewables, whether waste heat gets reused and more.

Ultimately, the intensified reporting is hoped not only to reveal how much energy sites are using, but how effectively they're balancing consumption in relation to local pressures like water stress.

"Tripling our data centre capacity cannot mean tripling the pressure on our grids, our water and our energy bills," Clean, Just and Competitive Transition EVP Teresa Ribera said.

The changes are also especially notable given ongoing changes within the bloc, because the EU has been ramping up more local compute options so as to reduce reliance on international options in a big sovereign drive. Over the next seven years, the EU wants to triple its data center capacity, per Reuters reporting.

Importantly, the changes won't happen overnight with the rating scheme subject to a two-month scrutiny window, the Commission detailed. Still, the first ratings are set to go live as early as this year, and by the end of 2028, the EU hopes to have reviewed just how effective those new enforcements were.

"Understanding their energy and resource consumption is the essential first step towards integrating them sustainably into our energy system," Energy and Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen added.

Google logo on a black background next to text reading 'Click to follow TechRadar'



via Hosting & Support
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Web Hosting
Remote IT Support
Sites & Socials

Popular posts from this blog

AI tools are making social engineering attacks even more convincing, and I fear that this is only the beginning

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit were brought crashing into the 21st century in December 2024 with their latest adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl . The film challenges our growing dependence on smart technology in the form of a robotic garden gnome, built by Wallace to support his gardening business, which is then hacked by the Kubrick-esque Feathers McGraw for his own nefarious purposes. One of the more interesting but less commented on parts of the film shows Gromit cautiously entering his house and being greeted by what he thinks is Wallace’s reassuring voice, only to be confronted with Feathers and the robotic gnome. Technology’s ability to mimic linguistic patterns, to clone a person’s voice and understand and respond to questions has developed dramatically in the last few years. This has not gone unnoticed by the world’s criminals and scammers, with the result that social engineering attacks are not only on the rise but are more sophisticated a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft, Google, and Meta have borrowed EV tech for the next big thing in data centers: 1MW watercooled racks

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Liquid cooling isn't optional anymore, it's the only way to survive AI's thermal onslaught The jump to 400VDC borrows heavily from electric vehicle supply chains and design logic Google’s TPU supercomputers now run at gigawatt scale with 99.999% uptime As demand for artificial intelligence workloads intensifies, the physical infrastructure of data centers is undergoing rapid and radical transformation. The likes of Google, Microsoft, and Meta are now drawing on technologies initially developed for electric vehicles (EVs), particularly 400VDC systems, to address the dual challenges of high-density power delivery and thermal management. The emerging vision is of data center racks capable of delivering up to 1 megawatt of power, paired with liquid cooling systems engineered to manage the resulting heat. Borrowing EV technology for data center evolution The shift to 400VDC power distribution marks a decisive break from legacy sy...
Post a Comment
Read more