The rise of AI chatbots led to the boom in the construction of data centers partially fueled by fossil fuels. Based on the rules adopted after lobbying by American companies, researchers now only have access to summaries of the environmental impacts of data centers made at the national level, The Guardian newspaper quotes from the conclusions of the investigation of the journalistic group Investigate Europe.
According to available information, Microsoft, the DigitalEurope organization, whose members include Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, and the Video Games Europe group, which includes Netflix and again Microsoft, lobbied for the introduction of these rules.
Legal experts believe that the general confidentiality clause is against EU transparency rules and the Aarhus Convention on public access to environmental information.
“I don’t remember a comparable case in two decades. This is clearly not in accordance with the convention,” said Professor Jerzy Jendrośka, who worked for nineteen years in the body overseeing compliance with the Aarhus Convention and currently teaches environmental law at the University of Opole.
The investigation also showed that the EU does indeed actively enforce the general confidentiality clause. An unnamed leading representative of the European Commission, for example, reminded national authorities that they have an obligation to “keep all information and key performance indicators of individual data centers confidential.”
“It is seriously important to repeat this point because the commission has already received several different requests from the media or the public for access to documents related to these data. So far, all these requests have been rejected,” said the representative.
Sources familiar with conversations within the European Commission say that the declassification of the metrics, according to its members, could lead to data center operators ceasing to share them with the union. However, according to EU data, only 36 percent of data centers properly fulfill the current requirement to report the required information even with this limitation.
Technology companies are turning away from clean energy
The artificial intelligence boom is currently being led by the United States and China, but data centers are currently being established in Europe at a breakneck pace. Specifically, in the next five to seven years, the EU plans to triple the capacity of data centers on its territory and thus rank among the global leaders in the field of AI.
Ben Youriev, a researcher at the non-profit organization InfluenceMap, which monitors corporate lobbying, said that the influence campaign of technology companies against the EU shows changes in the technology sector, which must cope with the transition to increased energy consumption.
“While the industry used to be vocal in its support for clean energy and emissions reductions, many companies have since fallen silent. Instead, they clearly favor the rapid global construction of data center infrastructure,” Youriev said.
DigitalEurope did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation’s findings, while the European Commission and Video Games Europe declined to comment. Despite evidence to the contrary, Microsoft has said it supports greater transparency about data centers because it could lead to better outcomes and build public trust.
“We are taking additional steps to increase openness while protecting confidential business information,” said a Microsoft spokesperson.
