EU data center sustainability laws begin to take shape

The EU is introducing several new financial and technical sustainability laws during the next few years. These laws will increase the regulatory reporting burden on owners, operators and users of European data centers.

KEY POINTS

• Most data center owners and operators, colocation tenants and cloud users will need to report climate-related financial risks, including their Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon footprint and energy use, under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
• The EU has developed an assessment framework, which is based on the long- standing European Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency in Data Centres, which can be used to assess whether a data center is being operated in a way that conforms to definitions of green economic activity under the EU Taxonomy.
• The EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) will require data center owners and operators to provide facility and IT data and metrics for each of their data centers with a nameplate IT power that exceeds 500 kilowatt (kW) — subject to change — with a subset of data to be made publicly available.
• The European Commission (EC) will gradually add definitions and expand the reporting requirements under these new directives. Organizations should also observe the legislative variations between EU member states.