EU Data Center Rules Draw Complaint as Netherlands Keeps Most Power and Water Data Secret

Lighthouse Reports, a Netherlands-based investigative non-profit, lodged the complaint against the European Commission this week, POLITICO reported on 30 September. The filing, made under the Aarhus Convention, argues the EU executive built a "wall of silence" around how much energy and water individual data centers consume.

The complaint will get its first test in November, when the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee meets to decide whether it is admissible. If it proceeds, the committee could later find the EU in breach of its obligations under the treaty, which the bloc joined in 2005. The Commission did not respond to POLITICO's request for comment.

What the Netherlands data shows

The numbers behind the argument are thin on the ground. In the Netherlands, less than a quarter of larger data centers publish data on their electricity and drinking water usage, according to research by Lighthouse Reports with Trouw and other European media, reported by NL Times on 30 September. The Dutch Datacenter Association counted 186 commercial data centers with a capacity of at least 500 kilowatts at the end of last year. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency, which collects the information for the EU, has data on only 104 of them. Public figures exist for the electricity usage of 44 centers and the water usage of 47, the outlet reported. The agency told Trouw it holds more data on some centers but did not provide figures. The European Energy Efficiency Directive has required operators above 500 kW to report energy and water consumption for three years.

• Data centers used 5.1 billion kWh in the Netherlands in 2024, 4.6 percent of national electricity consumption, according to Statistics Netherlands.
• Grid operator TenneT projects data centers will take 10 to 15 percent of Dutch electricity by 2030.
• Microsoft's largest Dutch data center alone accounts for 1 percent of national electricity consumption, per the Netherlands Enterprise Agency.

Water is a smaller share, estimated at about 0.1 percent of national consumption. The researchers spent a year invoking freedom of information laws across Europe and came away with nothing, NL Times reported.

Brussels pushes back, slowly

The Commission has publicly committed to tripling data center capacity to keep pace with the US and China. Last week it presented a transparency label that will grade operators from A to G on energy efficiency, water usage and clean power uptake, starting next summer. Lighthouse Reports said the label still conceals total consumption, calling the use of ratios over actual figures a choice that favors industry over public interest. The EU's own aggregate figures, published under a 2024 law that bans disclosure of individual data center metrics, show Europe's data centers used 20.7 terawatt-hours of electricity and more than 8 million cubic meters of water in 2025. That is a 26 percent rise in electricity and 52 percent in water from 2024, though the Commission acknowledges the totals come from incomplete data.

"If we do not make sure that these big power consumers are indeed in line with our overall objectives, then they will risk undermining our ability to live up to our own targets," EU energy chief Dan Jorgensen told POLITICO.

Diego Solier, a conservative member of the European Parliament working on the bloc's digital capacity push, told POLITICO that transparency should be the starting point, while adding it must be proportionate and should not force companies to disclose genuinely commercially sensitive information. The Commission declined to comment on the complaint itself.

The Dutch numbers land against a wider fight over data center power. In Texas, administrative law judges recommended on Wednesday that regulators approve a 366-megawatt gas plant for Meta's $10 billion El Paso data center only if ratepayers are not stuck with the bill, Inside Climate News reported. The judges found utility El Paso Electric did not adequately weigh alternatives. The five Public Utilities Commission of Texas commissioners have not scheduled a vote.

In the UK, more than 44,000 people have filed legal objections to Palantir's handling of NHS data through the Federated Data Platform, The Guardian reported on 30 September. The common thread is the same one Brussels faces: the infrastructure keeps growing, and the accounting of what it consumes stays mostly out of sight.