Data Centre Power and Cooling: Regulators Circle the Industry as Secrecy Hardens

The proposed decision, released on Wednesday by administrative law judges at the Public Utilities Commission of Texas, found that El Paso Electric failed to adequately consider alternatives to the gas plant, called McCloud, and never issued a request for proposals. The judges recommended approval only on the condition that the utility does not pass capital and operating costs on to ratepayers. Without that condition, they said, the application should be denied. The five PUCT commissioners have the final say, and no vote has been scheduled, according to Inside Climate News.

The numbers are not small. The McCloud facility would use 813 modular natural gas generators supplied by Enchanted Rock, each rated at 450 kilowatts, at an estimated cost of $499 million. It would supply Meta exclusively for the first five years before connecting to the broader transmission system. Meta would cover costs for that period, after which ratepayers could be asked to shoulder them.

El Paso Electric initially said solar would power the data centre. In December it applied to build gas instead.

Cooling is the other half of the problem

The regulatory fight in Texas is about generation, but the wider industry conversation is increasingly about heat. Data centre operators are rolling out direct-to-chip liquid cooling, chillers rated for higher voltages and closed-loop systems as rack densities climb, according to trade coverage of launches from LG, Trane Technologies and UL Solutions in late September. Those announcements are vendor claims, not independently verified performance figures. What is verifiable is that the cooling load is being sized against the same power contracts that regulators are now scrutinising.

In Europe, the same tension has produced a formal legal complaint. Lighthouse Reports, a Netherlands-based non-profit, filed a complaint on Monday against the European Commission under the Aarhus Convention. It accuses Brussels of building a "wall of silence" about data centre energy and water consumption. POLITICO, which first reported the filing, said the challenge faces its first test in November, when the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee decides whether it is admissible. The Commission did not respond to POLITICO's request for comment.

The underlying figures are partial by design. According to the Commission, Europe's data centres used 20.7 terawatt-hours of electricity and more than 8 million cubic metres of water in 2025, a 26% rise in electricity and 52% in water from 2024. Those totals come from incomplete data and are published only in aggregate, following a 2024 law that banned disclosure of information and key performance indicators for individual data centres. The EU's energy chief, Dan Jørgensen, told POLITICO that if big power consumers are not aligned with the bloc's overall objectives, "they will risk undermining our ability to live up to our own targets."

National reporting gaps

The Dutch picture is more granular and no more complete. NL Times reported on Wednesday that fewer than a quarter of larger Dutch data centres publish figures on electricity and drinking water use. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency has data on only 104 of the 186 commercial data centres with at least 500 kilowatts of capacity at the end of last year, according to the Dutch Datacenter Association. Public figures exist for the electricity use of 44 centres and the water use of 47.

Statistics Netherlands puts Dutch data centre electricity consumption at 5.1 billion kilowatt-hours in 2024, or 4.6% of national consumption, nearly double the level five years earlier. Grid operator TenneT projects 10% to 15% by 2030. Data from the RVO revealed this summer that Microsoft's largest Dutch data centre alone accounts for 1% of national electricity consumption; Google, which runs two large facilities in the country, does not disclose the figure.

Water is the harder number to pin down. Dutch data centres are estimated to account for about 0.1% of national consumption, small in aggregate but politically live in a country that has faced prolonged drought.

Disclosure fights in Washington and London

On Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent letters to Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle seeking information on the nondisclosure agreements those companies signed with government officials over data centre build-outs, according to copies viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The letters are the latest attempt to increase oversight of the facilities powering AI ahead of the midterm elections.

In the UK, more than 44,000 people have filed legal objections to their health data being handled by the Palantir-operated Federated Data Platform, The Guardian reported on Wednesday. The objections cite article 21 of the UK GDPR. Palantir says the platform is helping cut waiting lists, with trusts recording 117,000 additional operations, a 14.3% reduction in discharge delays for long-stay patients and a 5.6% improvement in cancer diagnosis within 28 days. NHS England said all NHS organisations remain in control of their data within the FDP.

What connects the Texas gas plant, the Brussels complaint and the NHS objections is not the technology. It is the terms. A 366-megawatt plant built for a single customer, a transparency label that grades efficiency without publishing consumption, a seven-year data contract with a break clause arriving in February 2027: each is a decision about who bears the cost and who gets to see the numbers. The cooling systems announced in late September will not settle that. The PUCT commissioners, the Aarhus committee and the objectors will.