In the last 12 months, we’ve had a few laws passed in Europe that are likely to lead to us having access to new data about the energy demands of datacenters. Which laws specifically is a bit more complicated, and this post is an attempt to explain the mechanism to others, as well make sense of it myself.
The first law – the energy efficiency directive
This is the law passed that obliges datacentre operators to make publicly available data they wouldn’t otherwise. Here’s the specific text, Article 12 of the directive:
By 15 May 2024 and every year thereafter, Member States shall require owners and operators of data centres in their territory with a power demand of the installed information technology (IT) of at least 500kW, to make the information set out in Annex VII publicly available, except for information subject to Union and national law protecting trade and business secrets and confidentiality.
Emphasis added is mine. As it turns out the 15th May deadline ended up being more like September 15th 2024 in the final version of the law.
What in this Annex VII stuff though?
Let’s have a look at Annex VII of the directive:
The following minimum information shall be monitored and published with regard to the energy performance of data centres referred to in Article 12:
- (a) the name of the data centre, the name of the owner and operators of the data centre, the date on which the data centre started its operations and the municipality where the data centre is based;
- (b) the floor area of the data centre, the installed power, the annual incoming and outgoing data traffic, and the amount of data stored and processed within the data centre;
- (c) the performance, during the last full calendar year, of the data centre in accordance with key performance indicators about, inter alia, energy consumption, power utilisation, temperature set points, waste heat utilisation, water usage and use of renewable energy, using as a basis, where applicable, the CEN/CENELEC EN 50600-4 ‘Information technology – Data centre facilities and infrastructures’, until the entry into force of the delegated act adopted pursuant to Article 33(3).
This information set out is an unprecedented level of detail. From a transparency point of view, it sounds great! However it’s not all unicorns and rainbows.
This bit muddies the waters somewhat in the original directive:
except for information subject to Union and national law protecting trade and business secrets and confidentiality
Broadly speaking, stuff like energy consumption, water usage and in some cases renewable energy are often treated as trade secrets by large tech firms. So this suggests that firms who do not want to share information willl use this clause to avoid disclosing anything they don’t want to.
What’s a directive anyway?
I’m glad you asked!
In Europe, a directive is a bit like a someone specifying a bunch of specific statements that laws in a every given country in Europe must agree with. In some cases, a country will pass its own law to confirm to these new statements in a directive. In other cases, a country might just amend existing laws, or find that they already have laws that comply with the spirit and substance of the directive.
The key thing though is that it’s the country’s own laws that enforce whatever was in the directive. In some cases might go further than the directive.
In Germany, for example, to comply with the Energy Efficiency Directive, lawmakers passed the Energy Efficiency Act. It delivered stuff in the Directive, but also required some new stuff that wasn’t in the directive, like requiring datacentres to meet minimum levels of efficiency after certain dates, make sure they use minimum amounts of renewable energy and so on.
OK, where were we?
We were covering how the directive seemed great for transparency, mandating public disclosure, except for the bit that said it wasn’t needed if a company felt it might mean sharing commerciallty sensitive information.
Does that mean we still end up with no data-informed policy?
Not quite. There are Directives, which need to be written into national law to take effect, and then there are Regulations, which work differently.
The second law, a regulation
Regulations automatically apply to every country in Europe right away – there’s no need to wait for each country to write stuff into their own laws. And there is a Regulation, the snappily titled COMMISSION DELEGATED REGULATION 2024/1364 that compels companies to still disclose the information they might otherwise shy away from disclosing. Here’s the part of the text specifying the database – point 8 in the opening part of the regulation:
(8) In order to establish the Union scheme for rating the sustainability of data centres, it is necessary to collect data on their sustainability. Therefore, a reporting mechanism for data centres should be established specifying what information and key performance indicators should be reported as well as the methodologies for monitoring and measuring that information and those indicators.
(9) Pursuant to Annex VII, point (c), to Directive (EU) 2023/1791, the key performance indicators are to measure the energy consumption, power utilisation, temperature set points, waste heat utilisation, water usage and use of renewable energy of data centres.
So here, data still needs to be collected. To avoid spooking companies, there’s a part making it clear that confidential data mustn’t be published for the world to see. It’s listed in point 12:
(12) Pursuant to Article 12(1) of Directive (EU) 2023/1791, the information of data centres subject to Union and national law protecting trade and business secrets and confidentiality must not be made publicly available. Article 12(3) also requires that the European database be publicly available on an aggregated level. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that the key performance indicators and other information reported to the European database are kept confidential.
So, we’ll still have a database created, and some aggregated stats might be made available to share some useful insights, but it won’t all be public open data.
What does this mean?
There is one set of laws, a Directive, that will mean data centre operators will need to make info publicly available. However there is a fairly obvous get-out clause – companies just need to say they see some data as commercially sensitive, and withhold it.
As a response to this, there is another law, a Rregulation, that means data centre operators will in the very least need to share this same information into a centralised, but closed database.
Here, commercial confidentiality is no easy get-out for companies – it still has to be reported, so lawmakers would in theory have access to make more sensible policy informed by the data that has been collected.
However, the law sets out that this confidentiality must be respected. Groups who have a stake in equitable laws being passed will not have access to this data, and won’t be able to make arguments informed by the same data as the people inside the European Commission have.
They would have to go on whatever information has been shared into the public domain as a result of the Energy Efficiency Directive being written into national laws.
That’s my current understanding. Phew!