Tech Giants Secure Hush on Datacenter Emissions Data in EU
Investigation reveals how US tech firms like Microsoft lobbied the EU to conceal the environmental impact of their data centers, blocking public access to green metrics.
A recent investigation has uncovered how major US tech companies, including Microsoft, successfully lobbied the European Union to hide the environmental toll of their data centers from public view. The companies' demands to block a database of green metrics were almost word-for-word incorporated into new EU rules.
The secrecy provision, which the European Commission added to its proposal after industry lobbying in 2024, hinders scrutiny of the pollution that individual data centers emit. As a result, researchers and the public now have access to only national-level summaries of the tech industry's energy footprint, rather than detailed data on specific facilities.
{{IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER}}Source: The Guardian
