How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

Posted by cyberlimerence 6 hours ago

Comments

Comment by p4bl0 11 minutes ago

For what it's worth, an alternative data source [1] is being created by the DCWatch project [2].

Comment by blitzar 2 hours ago

I forget, am i meant to be shaking with rage that the EU have regulations OR that the regulations include disclosure carveouts?

Comment by TeMPOraL 2 hours ago

You're supposed to go blind with rage after "the EU".

Comment by tjwebbnorfolk 37 minutes ago

I mean if you're gonna regulate, then regulate. But what's the point of making everyone do extra paperwork if there's no actual environmental effect of doing the paperwork because the big guys have loopholes

Comment by pas 21 minutes ago

While the precedent is clearly bad individual DCs don't matter, as long as the actual consumption and environmental load correctly shows up in regional stats.

As long as they pay the quotas it doesn't matter. DCs don't eat the water, people can go and take samples, measure temperature. Heck, how complicated it will be to put out a solar panel powered thermometer with a SIM card? Or set up a drone with a IR camera to fly around a DC each day? If someone wants to carry out a crusade against DCs, sure, there's plenty of precedent for that too! (see Cervantes 1605 and 1615) And of course if hedge funds want to know when to short the AI bubble they'll be doing the same anyway, so the commission should ask them to publish their data with a few months lag.

Comment by jampekka 53 minutes ago

It's that EU has illusion of regulation that is nerfed with either loopholes or lack of enforcement.

Comment by shimman 51 minutes ago

Nerfed carrying a lot of water here, neglecting the fact that big tech is successfully using the US federal government to threaten the whole of EU if they are slightly mean to Zuckerberg + friends.

Comment by jampekka 39 minutes ago

That is part of it, but e.g. GDPR enforcement has been dismal since its inception, also against European companies. E.g. "Pay or Okay" is widespread, although it's clearly illegal.

https://noyb.eu/en/noybs-pay-or-okay-report-how-companies-ma...

Comment by tjwebbnorfolk 37 minutes ago

Yea, regulation with no effect is just extra paperwork for no reason

Comment by jimnotgym 3 hours ago

I have complete confidence the EU will realise this may violate transparency laws, it will go to court in 7-8 years, publish a response in the next 5 finally getting this law fixed in about 2040. They always get these things right, in the end

Comment by pas 15 minutes ago

The obvious compromise seems to be to limit the duration of confidentiality to something reasonable. Let's say 1-2 years.

Furthermore the initial draft talked about aggregate data anyway. The EU really shouldn't care about individual DCs anyway.

As long as they keep the water clean (and pay for the relevant environmental load quotas) and have the permits who the fuck cares? It's idiotic anti-AI hysteria.

The quote about "ramping up their lobbying efforts" is also absurd, it's just a few lines after the paragraph that describes that the commission asked for feedback from the industry as part of some standard consultative process.

The most crazy part seems to be the commission's "we have always been at war with Eastasia" behavior regarding the confidentiality.

Comment by an0malous 49 minutes ago

Hey at least all your devices use USB-C and there’s alternative app stores no one really uses

Comment by menno-dot-ai 36 minutes ago

Add being able to use your data plan throughout the EU without roaming costs and we're back at two for three.

Comment by postepowanieadm 1 hour ago

EU has a really big problem with lobbing/corruption. Qatargate, russian connections, von der Leyen–Pfizer affair.

Comment by Frieren 38 minutes ago

Oil countries (that includes the USA) buying political will in Europe is nothing new. The EU was already fighting against its own internal corruption and inequality, the state of the world is not helping at all.

As inequality grows in any part of the globe that money will be used to corrupt the rest of the world. The EU is not immune to it.

So, we all need to fight against wealth accumulation, inequality and corruption.

Comment by tjwebbnorfolk 35 minutes ago

It kind of sounds like you're blaming other countries for corruption in the EU?

Comment by galangalalgol 31 minutes ago

I read it as the EU was having a hard enough time with corruption before external pressure got involved.

Comment by snarf21 1 hour ago

It isn't just the EU. Anytime $1M in lobbying will buy you $1B in contracts or regulatory capture, it will always be a no brainer. We need better transparency about the money trail and full disclosure before things go to vote so the public can weigh in.

Comment by Artoooooor 2 hours ago

Of course, transparency for thee but not for me.

Comment by rceDia 1 hour ago

Data centers are uber resource hogs: land, water, power. They compete for the same resources as other industries but also against the local citizenry. Who benefits from mass consumption of the resources and at what cost. Age old debate.

Comment by will4274 33 minutes ago

One out of three. Datacenters use small land and water compared to just about any other industry. The power consumption is significant.

Comment by jeffbee 1 hour ago

Have you always had similar things to say about the paper industry?

Comment by deburo 23 minutes ago

Indeed, their argument makes no sense. They would probably complain about any industry building large factories. It seems they don't like progress, and not even the status quo, they would prefer regression.

Comment by shimman 52 minutes ago

Paper provides an actual utility that people want and serves a real human need. Hyper scale data centers only exist to make Garfield porn and help scammers.

Comment by jve 11 minutes ago

You are using HN which may or may not be hosted in datacenter.

To reach HN you are probably hopping via some communication hubs that may be located in datacenter.

You are going to store to buy some stuff which probably hosts their infra in a datacenter or use datacenter services.

You do use mobile phone? Well they also need to host services somewhere and make connectivity.

The school where your kids go either uses school management software and/or websites which provide educational material or doing exams.

Then you have online video conferencing...

I mean this list could get pretty long - I think listing them here on HN is kind of useless. It is just the datacenter infra is at the very bottom, providing foundational but invisible service to end users. Just like we don't see how things are manufactured or how raw materials are sourced for making real stuff, same goes with datacenter.

Comment by jeffbee 36 minutes ago

This is what we call "an opinion".

Comment by moi2388 1 hour ago

Yes

Comment by nDRDY 3 hours ago

I wonder if this is less about the environmental impact (which can be greenwashed as necessary), and more about the power consumption of individual data centres.

Comment by jve 2 hours ago

Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage. And then there is a PUE ratio which indicates how much power is to be used by feeding the equipment vs overall usage for supporting equipment (cooling).

Just this week we launched a datacenter hat runs 100% on renewable energy even in case when diesel engines have to turn on and seeking LEED certification: https://delska.com/about/news-resources/delska-newsroom/dels... - the available energy to the DC is always trumpeted in topic. Yeah, we are kind of proud of technical achievements and efficiency achieved.

But we have the luxury as being slightly nordic, not needing to consume water for cooling. And what is not widespread but taking effect is that datacenters are able to give the heat for useful purposes like heating homes. It needs datacenter to be in city and cooperation for gov agencies, but this is the path that is being taken across countries: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/06/sustainable-data-cen...

Comment by nDRDY 2 hours ago

>Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage

Exactly - would be nice if that information was public knowledge!

Comment by pastage 41 minutes ago

You do not want a modern datacenter near people.

Comment by will4274 30 minutes ago

Why? Datacenters have smaller effects on neighbors than other industries. No runoff like farming, no pollution like factories

Comment by lwhi 2 hours ago

I imagine they want to ensure that the consumption data can't be used to reverse engineer technical information relating to each specific centre.

Comment by johndunne 3 hours ago

I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder. It breaks the link between people and matters that concern society (like the environment, in the case of this article). In the drive to increase profit, individual legislators can be convinced to tweak a law or two for 'greater economic growth' somewhere. Over the decades, the effect is a shift in political power away from the people and into industry and ultimately into the hands of a few. I've come to think that this is what we're witnessing in the US. While we're not looking, the landscape is changing behind the scenes. Bram Vranken's quote from the article is poignant: 'Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?' I often wonder what can be done by us (i.e. all people) to push back and it mostly requires a lot of effort from everyone; participation in Democracy.

Comment by tjwebbnorfolk 34 minutes ago

what does this have to do with EU politicians breaking their own rules

Comment by TeMPOraL 2 hours ago

No fiduciary responsibility needed, democracy alone is enough to encourage corruption.

For example, a company decision-maker responsible for picking the city/county/country in which their company will put a new factory is in position of great influence on municipal/regional/national level politics - simply because the people want jobs, and politicians want to be popular with the people.

Comment by latexr 1 hour ago

> simply because the people want jobs

To be more precise, the people want to live within a certain standard. I can’t think of anyone¹ who really wants a job. Purpose, something to do, money (which translates to standard of living), recognition, sure, but those don’t really necessitate a job, as in something you have to do on the regular to be able to survive through the indirection of money.

The distinction is important because those who have the power you described are also the ones who have the biggest incentive to perpetuate this notion that everyone needs a job and that there’s no other way the system could work. Thus, by framing it in the context of jobs we’re discussing on their terms and have already lost.

¹ For sure there’ll be someone, but not enough to be meaningful.

Comment by TeMPOraL 21 minutes ago

I agree, thanks for the correction. In the timeless words of 'nostromo:

No job is the goal. No money is the problem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987073

Comment by kvgr 2 hours ago

The issue is corruption and it is in capitalism, socialism and communism. Corruption is everywhere all the time. Capitalism is just redistribution of resources. There is also redistribution of resources in communism and there the corruption i would say is even bigger. Less in amount for one specific person, but spread out throught society that it rots from inside.

Comment by billynomates 2 hours ago

Capitalism is not the redistribution of resources. It is an economic system in which the means of production are owned by private owners, as opposed to collectively.

In theory, full communism prevents corruption by removing its structural causes rather than relying on laws or moral exhortation. And since corruption under capitalism (in Marxist analysis) stems from private ownership, class divisions, and the scramble for scarce resources, abolishing those conditions should eliminate the incentives that drive people to exploit positions of power for personal gain. Without private property to accumulate or a state apparatus to capture, the reasoning goes, there would simply be nothing left to be corrupt about.

Comment by Isamu 2 hours ago

>Without private property to accumulate or a state apparatus to capture, the reasoning goes, there would simply be nothing left to be corrupt about.

Right, it becomes mostly the corruption of power, and the lengths people will go to in order to retain it. It’s astonishing that is not recognized as a problem.

Comment by direwolf20 3 hours ago

This isn't solely due to shareholder fiduciary duty. Even without such a duty, the shareholders would fire anyone who doesn't put them first. Even without shares, a sole owner of a company would also do that. No matter your position, you don't get to do things that are bad for your boss, so the ultimate bosses (whoever they are in a given system) hold all the power.

And power has a tendency to accumulate. Powerful people always use their power to increase their power. There are no exceptions.

Comment by wongarsu 2 hours ago

Fiduciary duty effectively turns profit maximization into the only valid goal. Companies with sole owners or family businesses tend to have much more diverse goals. Many of Europe's large companies are still private (certainly more so than in the US), and from the ones I've personally dealt with the image of the founder/owner/family is often a driving concern. That can materialize as better business practices, or as a ruthless business that reinvests a notable part of profits in projects with public benefit, usually locally wherever they are headquartered.

Other examples in the US would include SpaceX, which supposedly is not about profit but about building a mars colony (and so far their actions seem to align with that), or Rupert Murdoch's media empire that's at least as much about spreading right wing views in the anglosphere as it is about money.

Comment by tgv 2 hours ago

That's an Ayn Rand type black and white view of society. Not so long ago, companies were supposed to (and many did) care for continuity, in a broad sense: survival, labor, customer, and product. Nowadays, you would add environment too. Shares were a way of getting more interest than a savings account. Heck, there were even cooperations in which the laborers were shareholders as well.

The word you are looking for is greed.

Comment by TeMPOraL 2 hours ago

Corporations do care for survival and continuity - of themselves. Not the people, not even people working in them or running them - just themselves.

Comment by RandomLensman 2 hours ago

How could a corporation itself care about anything? How would it act itself (without humans), for example, to express such care?

In my experience, it is always people.

Comment by TeMPOraL 1 hour ago

Think in terms of a dynamic system. Or in terms of "selfish gene", as I've observed it to be easier to talk about.

Any single person or group in a corporation is expendable. You can swap out the sales department or a CEO, and the corporation will continue on its course without a pause or major change of direction. No single person or group of people is in total control of the direction - what directs the corporation is the sum total of ideas, vibes, internal influences, bylaws, operating practices, assets, and external environment of competitors and markets and regulatory landscape. The people that make up a corporation may be diverse and have conflicting goals, but if there's one thing they're all aligned on, is that they all want to keep their jobs and increase their pay or influence. I.e. they want the corporation to go on, to survive at least to their next paycheck.

The end result is, a corporation can be seen as an independent entity - kinda like an animal (or a super-colony for more accurate comparison) with a survival drive independent of the people that form it.

Comment by RandomLensman 1 hour ago

If there is a single owner, could shut down the place, for example.

As I said, in my experience, the humans - interchangible or not, as customers, competitors, owners etc - determine what happens, not the corporation itself.

Can look at a corporate as "living thing" itself, but I think that underestimates the human side.

Comment by stingraycharles 3 hours ago

> I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder.

That’s not the least of my concerns. My problem with capitalism is its desire to influence politics in its favor, and the utter lack of regulation amongst politicians (ie self regulation) to forbid this practice.

The whole industry of lobbying should not be allowed to exist.

Comment by thfuran 2 hours ago

Lobbying must be allowed to exist. You bringing issues to the attention of your representative or asking them to change some policy is lobbying. It is even very useful to allow organizations to lobby politicians. For example, I want EFF to be able to lobby politicians about things I don't have the time or influence to really push for political change on. I do wonder how we could effectively restrict corporate lobbying in that context. Maybe there could be a special type of charitable nonprofit that is more restricted, such as only being allowed to accept funding from individuals rather than corporations and then deny lobbying rights to anyone acting as agent of any organization other than one of that sort? But I think we're very far from a political environment in the US in which any constitutional amendment restricting personal rights in the political process would end well.

Comment by Neikius 57 minutes ago

Well lobbying is ok. Bribing is not.

I guess we need to pay politicians enough. And have very very strict checks on their wealth. Maybe even only pick people with no families and don't allow them property. That would essentially eliminate bribery. Question is what else would it do... Nothing is so simple in the end.

But yes any such system has to be very simple at it's core.

Comment by marsven_422 3 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by _ache_ 3 hours ago

A french article on the same subject, but paywalled.

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2026/04/17/comm...

Comment by mig39 31 minutes ago

Archive link: https://archive.is/k4Pxr

Comment by stingraycharles 3 hours ago

That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for here.

Comment by jeffbee 1 hour ago

Can anyone name any other industry that is as open and transparent about power and water usage as the IT industry? How much energy does your local oil refinery, metal smelter, borax plant use?

Large data center operators are already far more transparent with their annual reports than any other industry.