Lighthouse Reports has accused the European Commission of blocking public access to energy and water use of individual data centres. The Dutch non-profit newsroom filed a complaint under the Aarhus Convention, a binding treaty on access to environmental information that the EU joined in 2005. The case lands as Europe's data centres consumed 20.7 terawatt-hours of power in 2025, equal to Croatia's use, which makes site-level disclosure a business issue.
Why Lighthouse calls EU disclosure a wall of silence
The complaint says Commission officials intended to prevent access to data centre performance data and made the limited data released difficult to read. It points to a 2024 law that bars Brussels and national capitals from sharing data on individual sites. Because technology companies lobbied for secrecy on business-interest grounds, the Commission can publish only aggregate totals rather than facility figures.
The current reporting regime therefore relies on ratios and totals instead of actual consumption per site. Last week the Commission presented a rating label that will grade data centres from A to G on energy efficiency, water use and clean power starting next summer. Lighthouse argues the label still hides total use and other figures needed to assess a site's carbon footprint.
The dispute unfolds against rapid expansion and rising local resistance. Power consumption rose by 26% and water consumption by 52% in 2024, based on incomplete data, while 2025 water use exceeded 8 million cubic meters. At the same time the EU plans to triple data centre capacity to keep pace with the US and China as AI infrastructure demand grows, even as energy bills rise across Europe.
What restricted data means for AI infrastructure buyers
For companies that rent capacity or place AI workloads in Europe, the lack of site-level data narrows comparison between providers and locations. Totals for Europe do not show which facility uses more power or water per unit of compute, or which one runs on clean power. That gap matters for procurement, cost forecasting and environmental reporting, with large operators better placed to request private disclosures than smaller buyers.
The proposed A to G label will add a common yardstick, but it does not by itself replace consumption figures. Ratios can mask scale: an efficient site can still consume large absolute volumes of electricity and water. Buyers should therefore ask vendors for total power and water per site, measurement boundaries, data completeness, and how the grade relates to carbon footprint.
The Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee will decide in November whether the complaint is admissible and could later find the EU in breach of the treaty. Conservative MEP Diego Solier, involved in the EU digital capacity plan, said transparency should be the starting point while opposing disclosure of highly sensitive business data. The Commission did not respond to a request for comment.
