How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

https://www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/big-tech-data-centres-secrecy-eu-law-environment-footprint

63•cyberlimerence•3h ago

Comments

_ache_•1h ago

A french article on the same subject, but paywalled.

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2026/04/17/comm...

stingraycharles•49m ago

That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for here.

johndunne•1h ago

I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder. It breaks the link between people and matters that concern society (like the environment, in the case of this article). In the drive to increase profit, individual legislators can be convinced to tweak a law or two for 'greater economic growth' somewhere. Over the decades, the effect is a shift in political power away from the people and into industry and ultimately into the hands of a few. I've come to think that this is what we're witnessing in the US. While we're not looking, the landscape is changing behind the scenes. Bram Vranken's quote from the article is poignant: 'Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?' I often wonder what can be done by us (i.e. all people) to push back and it mostly requires a lot of effort from everyone; participation in Democracy.

direwolf20•1h ago

This isn't solely due to shareholder fiduciary duty. Even without such a duty, the shareholders would fire anyone who doesn't put them first. Even without shares, a sole owner of a company would also do that. No matter your position, you don't get to do things that are bad for your boss, so the ultimate bosses (whoever they are in a given system) hold all the power.

And power has a tendency to accumulate. Powerful people always use their power to increase their power. There are no exceptions.

tgv•39m ago

That's an Ayn Rand type black and white view of society. Not so long ago, companies were supposed to (and many did) care for continuity, in a broad sense: survival, labor, customer, and product. Nowadays, you would add environment too. Shares were a way of getting more interest than a savings account. Heck, there were even cooperations in which the laborers were shareholders as well.

The word you are looking for is greed.

wongarsu•28m ago

Fiduciary duty effectively turns profit maximization into the only valid goal. Companies with sole owners or family businesses tend to have much more diverse goals. Many of Europe's large companies are still private (certainly more so than in the US), and from the ones I've personally dealt with the image of the founder/owner/family is often a driving concern. That can materialize as better business practices, or as a ruthless business that reinvests a notable part of profits in projects with public benefit, usually locally wherever they are headquartered.

Other examples in the US would include SpaceX, which supposedly is not about profit but about building a mars colony (and so far their actions seem to align with that), or Rupert Murdoch's media empire that's at least as much about spreading right wing views in the anglosphere as it is about money.

stingraycharles•51m ago

> I find this facet of Capitalism the most concerning; fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder.

That’s not the least of my concerns. My problem with capitalism is its desire to influence politics in its favor, and the utter lack of regulation amongst politicians (ie self regulation) to forbid this practice.

The whole industry of lobbying should not be allowed to exist.

thfuran•30m ago

Lobbying must be allowed to exist. You bringing issues to the attention of your representative or asking them to change some policy is lobbying. It is even very useful to allow organizations to lobby politicians. For example, I want EFF to be able to lobby politicians about things I don't have the time or influence to really push for political change on. I do wonder how we could effectively restrict corporate lobbying in that context. Maybe there could be a special type of charitable nonprofit that is more restricted, such as only being allowed to accept funding from individuals rather than corporations and then deny lobbying rights to anyone acting as agent of any organization other than one of that sort? But I think we're very far from a political environment in the US in which any constitutional amendment restricting personal rights in the political process would end well.

kvgr•13m ago

The issue is corruption and it is in capitalism, socialism and communism. Corruption is everywhere all the time. Capitalism is just redistribution of resources. There is also redistribution of resources in communism and there the corruption i would say is even bigger. Less in amount for one specific person, but spread out throught society that it rots from inside.

jimnotgym•1h ago

I have complete confidence the EU will realise this may violate transparency laws, it will go to court in 7-8 years, publish a response in the next 5 finally getting this law fixed in about 2040. They always get these things right, in the end

nDRDY•46m ago

I wonder if this is less about the environmental impact (which can be greenwashed as necessary), and more about the power consumption of individual data centres.

lwhi•36m ago

I imagine they want to ensure that the consumption data can't be used to reverse engineer technical information relating to each specific centre.

jve•22m ago

Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage. And then there is a PUE ratio which indicates how much power is to be used by feeding the equipment vs overall usage for supporting equipment (cooling).

Just this week we launched a datacenter hat runs 100% on renewable energy even in case when diesel engines have to turn on and seeking LEED certification: https://delska.com/about/news-resources/delska-newsroom/dels... - the available energy to the DC is always trumpeted in topic. Yeah, we are kind of proud of technical achievements and efficiency achieved.

But we have the luxury as being slightly nordic, not needing to consume water for cooling. And what is not widespread but taking effect is that datacenters are able to give the heat for useful purposes like heating homes. It needs datacenter to be in city and cooperation for gov agencies, but this is the path that is being taken across countries: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/06/sustainable-data-cen...

nDRDY•20m ago

>Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage

Exactly - would be nice if that information was public knowledge!

Artoooooor•21m ago

Of course, transparency for thee but not for me.

blitzar•10m ago

I forget, am i meant to be shaking with rage that the EU have regulations OR that the regulations include disclosure carveouts?

TeMPOraL•6m ago

You're supposed to go blind with rage after "the EU".

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How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

Comments

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