EU tells Big Tech to align AI data centres with climate goals or stay away

TL;DR

EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen says AI companies are welcome in Europe only if they commit to the bloc’s climate goals. The warning comes as a planned data centre sustainability label is delayed over a nuclear power dispute, and only 36 per cent of data centres have reported their energy use.

The European Union’s energy chief has told the AI industry it is welcome in Europe, but only on the bloc’s terms. In an interview with Politico, Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said companies must demonstrate commitment to the EU’s energy, climate, and environmental goals if they want to build data centres on the continent.

That means supporting renewable and nuclear power rather than fossil fuels, and recycling the enormous quantities of waste heat that servers produce. “If we use just half of the excess waste heat today, we could heat 4 million European homes,” Jørgensen said.

“This is, in my view, unacceptable,” he added.

The energy crunch

The warning comes as the AI boom drives unprecedented demand for data centre capacity. The Kiel Institute projects that EU data centres could consume up to 168 terawatt-hours of electricity by 2030, roughly equivalent to Poland’s total annual demand.

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Ireland has already become a cautionary tale. Data centres there consume about 22 per cent of national electricity, the highest share per capita in the world.

A report published in late May by Beyond Fossil Fuels and Friends of the Earth Ireland found that data centre expansion added an estimated €715 million to Irish household electricity bills between 2015 and 2023. The average household paid an extra €360 over that period.

Denmark has paused all new grid connections after AI-driven demand overwhelmed its clean power grid. Jørgensen warned that unless the sector integrates into local energy systems, political backlash could grow across the continent.

A label in limbo

The Commission is preparing a mandatory sustainability rating scheme for data centres, covering energy efficiency, water use, clean energy consumption, and waste heat recovery. But the proposal has been delayed after fierce pushback from both industry and EU governments.

The central dispute is over nuclear power. The draft criteria counted only renewable electricity as “clean,” excluding nuclear despite its near-zero carbon emissions.

Ten member states, led by France and Finland, demanded the Commission recognise nuclear as a sustainable energy source for data centres. Some warn that penalising low-carbon but non-renewable grids could push AI investment out of Europe entirely.

The label was originally scheduled for adoption in the second quarter of 2026. That deadline has now slipped, and the Commission has not set a new date.

The transparency problem

Jørgensen also highlighted a basic data gap. Only 36 per cent of data centres required to report their energy performance under existing EU rules have actually done so, raising questions about the bloc’s ability to regulate an industry it cannot yet measure.

“We need more transparency because they are a very important player,” Jørgensen said. “It’s also in their interest to show how well they’re doing and that they can be a part of the solution and not only a problem.”

The interview landed days before the Commission unveiled its European Technological Sovereignty Package on 3 June, which includes a Cloud and AI Development Act aimed at tripling EU data centre capacity within five to seven years. The tension between that ambition and the bloc’s climate commitments is exactly what Jørgensen was warning about.

Europe wants to compete with the US and China on AI infrastructure, where projects like Meta’s $200 billion gas-powered Hyperion campus in Louisiana show what unconstrained expansion looks like. But it also wants that infrastructure to run clean.

Some companies are already finding ways to reuse data centre heat, but scaling those solutions continent-wide remains a challenge the Commission has yet to solve.