US tech firms successfully lobbied EU to hide environmental toll of data centres

'In two decades, I cannot recall a comparable case'

The EU aims to triple its data centre capacity in the next five to seven years as it seeks to position itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence. File picture.

Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their data centres, an investigation has found, with demands to block a database of green metrics from public view written almost word for word into EU rules.

The secrecy provision, which the European Commission added to its proposal almost verbatim after industry lobbying in 2024, hinders scrutiny of the pollution that individual data centres emit. It leaves researchers with just national-level summaries of their energy footprints.