If the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century was connected with the steel rails of the railways, the new industrial revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) appears likely to be decided in data centers. The battle – geopolitical, economic, environmental – over the physical infrastructure of AI has already begun. And social reactions are increasing.

In Seattle, home to Microsoft and Amazon, the city council imposed last week a one-year moratorium on new large data centers following reactions over water consumption, noise, pressure on the electricity grid, and the possible increase in energy costs. In Mississippi, residents filed legal action against a facility connected to xAI and SpaceX, citing continuous noise and vibrations from a power-generation unit serving data centers. In Cape Town, Equinix plans faced official objections over water and energy use in a city with recent experience of extreme water scarcity.

The scale of what is at stake is reflected in a recent report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH). Under current trends, data centers could by 2030 consume approximately 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, with a water footprint of 9.3 trillion liters, while their emissions could reach 400 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. In the shadow of these figures, Google speaks of air cooling and recycled water in vulnerable regions. Microsoft is proposing new closed-loop cooling designs.

What is happening in the EU

The new EU agenda is now moving in sync with the tsunami-like growth of data centers. On June 3, the Commission presented the new technological sovereignty package, connecting semiconductors, cloud computing, and AI models into a single strategic plan. At its core are the Cloud and AI Development Act, the Chips Act 2.0, and the goal of tripling the capacity of European data centers within the next five to seven years.

The ambition is not starting from zero. In February 2025, the EU announced InvestAI, aiming to mobilize €200 billion for AI infrastructure, including €20 billion for AI gigafactories. Two months later, the AI Continent Action Plan placed AI factories and AI gigafactories within the same framework, large computing facilities for the training and use of advanced AI models.

The Commission wants to reduce dependence on the United States and China. Skeptics point out that Europe still lags behind in capital, advanced chips, cheap energy, and speed of implementation.

Digital sovereignty is already moving from reports to contracts. In April, the Commission awarded a €180 million cloud-computing contract to four providers or consortia, including Scaleway, OVHcloud, Post Luxembourg, and STACKIT. A few weeks later, France decided to move the Health Data Hub from Microsoft Azure to the French company Scaleway, a move with strong symbolism regarding data sovereignty.

The limitations

The Commission recognizes that the expansion of data centers runs into objective limitations: electricity, water, land, grid connection, and financing.

According to Eurelectric, approximately 28% of the increase in European electricity demand by 2030 will come from data centers. At the same time, the Commission is planning minimum energy-efficiency standards and a sustainability labeling system for large facilities, although the proposal has been delayed, among other reasons due to disagreements over the evaluation of data centers powered by nuclear energy.

Ireland has already shown what happens when demand for digital infrastructure grows faster than the electricity grid and spatial planning. In 2024, data centers consumed 22% of the country’s electricity, more than urban households.

In Denmark, applications for connecting large power loads led this year to a temporary halt on new major connections. In Lombardy, authorities established a framework to direct the expected investment boom toward former industrial areas and discourage installations on agricultural land or protected areas.

The cases differ. The pattern repeats itself. Europe’s digital sovereignty will first pass through more analogue limitations: electricity, water, land.

Transparency gap

A recent journalistic investigation by Investigative Europe highlighted a critical transparency gap surrounding the environmental footprint of data centers in the EU.

Article 12 of the revised Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency provides that key information about data centers must be made publicly available, excluding only information protected by EU and national laws concerning commercial secrecy and confidentiality.

However, Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 ended up considering, as a whole, the information and key indicators of every individual facility confidential. The investigation showed that the wording followed almost word-for-word comments submitted, among others, by Microsoft and DigitalEurope.

Thus, crucial indicators – from energy and water consumption to heat reuse and the use of renewable sources – are published only in aggregated form.

Speaking to To Vima, Christina Irion, associate professor of Information Law at the University of Amsterdam, argues that the Regulation changes the starting point of the European rule from transparency with specific exceptions to confidentiality as a general presumption.

“Instead of the protection of commercially sensitive information being examined on a case-by-case basis,” she notes, “the exception risks becoming the rule.”

Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and founder of Digiconomist, tells To Vima that without data at facility level, we do not know which electricity source supplies a specific data center or from which water infrastructure the water it uses is drawn.

The question of whether additional consumption burdens an already stressed region disappears within the national average.

The invocation of confidentiality also has a political dimension. As Bram Vranken from Corporate Europe Observatory tells To Vima, the EU’s digital competitiveness agenda has opened the way for greater influence by Big Tech.

In an already concentrated market, he warns, deregulation will not necessarily create European champions.

“More likely, it will benefit the already powerful players, limiting public visibility of the environmental cost,” he concludes.