The Commission has published today a new delegated regulation on the energy efficiency of data centres and launched a 4-week period for public feedback on the text. This secondary legislation creates a reporting scheme for data centres and represents the first phase in the establishment of an EU-wide scheme to rate the sustainability of EU data centres, as foreseen under the new, recast Energy Efficiency Directive, which entered into force on 10 October 2023. With data centres estimated to account for close to 3% of EU electricity demand and likely to increase in the coming years, the scheme is intended to increase transparency and potentially to promote new designs and efficiency developments in data centres that can not only reduce energy and water consumption, but also promote the use of renewable energy, increased grid efficiency, or the reuse of waste heat in nearby facilities and heat networks.
Under Article 12 of the recast Energy Efficiency Directive, data centres will be required to publish information on their energy performance and sustainability [as detailed under Annex VII]. This information, along with key performance indicators, will also be communicated to an EU-level database and published in an aggregated form. This delegated regulation sets out what information and key performance indicators should be reported by data centres. It also defines the first sustainability indicators that will be used for the rating of data centres.
The delegated act also falls under the “promoting climate-neutrality actions for the IT sector” that was foreseen in the Action Plan for the Digitalisation of the Energy Sector, published in October 2022.
Next steps
Following the 4-week period for public feedback, the Commission will finalise the delegated regulation and start the procedure for its adoption. This entails the Commission publishing/adopting the text and then allowing the Council and the European Parliament a 2-month period of scrutiny to adopt or reject the text [but not propose changes]. The period can be extended by a further 2 months if the Parliament/Council so requests.
Background
The recent Energy Efficiency Directive recast sets a new binding target of reducing the EU energy consumption by 11.7% by 2030 relative to forecast energy consumption for 2030 made in 2020. The Directive identifies the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) sector as a sector of increasing importance in this context. In 2018, the energy consumption of data centres in the EU was 76.8 TWh. This is expected to rise to 98.5 TWh by 2030 - a 28% increase. This increase in absolute terms in its energy footprint can also be seen in relative terms: within the Union, data centres accounted for 2.7% of electricity demand in 2018 and will reach 3.21% by 2030 if development continues at the current trajectory. Many commentators feel that these figures are lower than will happen in reality, given the strong growth of emerging services and technologies such as streaming, cloud gaming, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality.
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Details
- Publication date
- 12 December 2023
- Author
- Directorate-General for Energy