Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their datacentres, 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 datacentres emit. It leaves researchers with just national-level summaries of their energy footprints.
The rise of AI chatbots has spurred a boom in the construction of chip-filled warehouses with a hunger for power that is being met, in part, by burning fossil gas. Legal scholars warn the blanket confidentiality clause may fall foul of EU transparency rules and the Aarhus convention on public access to environmental information.
“In two decades, recall a comparable case,” said Prof Jerzy Jendrośka, who spent 19 years on the body overseeing the convention and teaches environmental law at the University of Opole in Poland. “This clearly seems not to be in line with the convention.”
Documents obtained by Investigate Europe, an independent journalism cooperative that led the research in collaboration with the Guardian and other media partners, show the rules have already been used to shield datacentres from scrutiny.
In an email citing the secrecy clause last year, a senior commission official reminded national authorities of their obligation to “keep confidential all information and key performance indicators for individual datacentres.”
“It is really important to reiterate this point as the commission has already received various requests for access to documents by the media or the public in relation to the data,” the official said. “All these requests have been so far refused.”
The US and China have led the global AI boom but even in Europe datacentres are being built at breakneck speed. The EU aims to triple its datacentre capacity in the next five to seven years as it seeks to position itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence.
In a move to increase transparency, the commission updated its energy efficiency directive in 2023 to oblige datacentre operators to report data on key performance indicators. In further guidance, it proposed publishing “aggregated” environmental metrics.
But during public consultations in January 2024, tech companies pushed to classify all individual information on datacentres as confidential, citing commercial interests. The demand means the data cannot even be accessed through freedom of information requests.
Microsoft and the lobby organisation DigitalEurope submitted position papers to the Commission. In doing so, they closely coordinated with each other to lobby for the transparency requirements set out in the EED to be significantly weakened, and for the scope of trade and business secrets to be broadened to cover all data on individual data centres.
Information was only to be made available at an aggregate level. In effect, this makes it impossible to know how much energy a specific data centre would leverage, making it significantly harder to document the real-world consequences of building more data centres and their environmental impact.
It’s important to note that the vast energy requirements of data centres are creating political backlash. Resistance campaigns are increasing, from locals objecting to skyrocketing electricity bills in Ireland, to communities facing water scarcity in Spain.
In the United States, grassroots groups have substantially slowed down the data centre rush. According to one estimate, at least $156 billion across 48 projects were blocked or stalled in 2025.
Even as Europe is still in the early stages of the data centre build out, Big Tech firms – who have staked billions on AI – have a key interest in creating roadblocks for this kind of growing opposition.
With this in mind, the reasons stated by Microsoft and DigitalEurope for blocking information on data centre energy usage are deeply troubling. Microsoft warned the Commission in its submission that raw data on individual data centres could be released in response to access-to-information requests from NGOs, including those relating to the energy use of data centres.
For instance, DigitalEurope writes that “storing this data within the Commission’s database raises concerns about potential reactive data publication in response to access requests from competitors and NGOs under existing transparency frameworks”.
Why did tech companies push to classify all individual datacentre data as confidential?
They cited commercial interests, arguing that storing such data in the Commission’s database raised concerns about potential reactive publication in response to access requests from competitors and NGOs under existing transparency frameworks.
How does the secrecy provision affect researchers and public scrutiny of datacentre emissions?
It hinders scrutiny of the pollution that individual datacentres emit and leaves researchers with only national-level summaries of energy footprints, making it impossible to assess the local environmental impact of specific facilities.