Big Tech firms ‘influenced’ European Commission data center rules to keep environmental data secret: report

Evidence shows that Big Tech and a major industry lobby had drafted policy language to hide data center environmental impact data.

According to a cross-border investigation published last week by Investigate Europe and media partners across nine countries, a Big Tech technology firm and a major industry lobby had “helped shape” an EU rule that keeps individual data center environmental data out of public view.

The result is that details such as water use, energy efficiency, and other site-level sustainability metrics are being treated as confidential even though the European Commission has been collecting them under a 2023–2024 reporting framework.

The investigation asserts that Microsoft and DigitalEurope, whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta, had pushed an identical proposal early in 2024 that would classify all individual data center information as commercially sensitive. That language was then reflected in the final EU approach, verbatim, going beyond the Commission’s earlier plan to publish the data in aggregated form.

Critics argue the change undercuts the point of the law. Legal scholars quoted in the reporting say the blanket secrecy provision may conflict with EU transparency rules and the Aarhus Convention, which gives the public access to environmental information. The concern is especially sharp because the EU is expected to expand its data center capacity rapidly in the coming years, making the sector’s resource use more consequential.

The European Commission has defended the confidentiality treatment by saying publication of site-by-site data could discourage operators from reporting at all, even though they are legally required to do so. Sources cited in the investigation say some officials fear that too much disclosure could make compliance harder, while industry argues that protecting business information is necessary.

Officially, Microsoft has said it supports greater transparency around data centers, and is working towards ambitious 2030 commitments on carbon, water, waste, and biodiversity, while also protecting confidential business information.

The investigation report notes that the European Commission still plans to publish sustainability scores for a limited set of indicators, but most of the underlying data will remain hidden from public scrutiny.

Taken together, the saga shows how a technical EU disclosure rule became a test case for the balance between environmental transparency and corporate secrecy. It also raises a broader question about whether the Big Tech firms being regulated had been able to write too much of the rulebook themselves.