The European Commission has proposed a common EU-wide rating scheme for data centres designed to increase transparency on their energy and resource use and to support their integration into the bloc’s electricity system.
What the Commission announced
The proposal targets individual data centres with an electrical capacity above 500 kW and sets out to provide standardised, comparable information on the actual consumption of energy and water. It will also cover how data centres contribute to the grid, including practices such as reuse of waste heat and the addition of on-site clean energy generation.
Alongside the legal proposal for the rating scheme, the Commission has launched a call for evidence and a public consultation on minimum performance standards for data centres operating in Europe. The legislative text will undergo a two-month scrutiny period by the European Parliament and the Council before it can enter into force.
The Commission expects the first sustainability labels for individual data centres under the scheme to be displayed in 2027.
Why it matters
Data centres are a rapidly growing sector. Citing the International Energy Agency, the Commission notes that data centres could consume more than 3% of EU electricity demand by 2030. The projected expansion — the Commission says the EU is looking to triple data centre capacity over the next five to seven years — increases pressure on electricity grids and on natural resources such as water, while contributing to carbon emissions.
By creating a common rating scheme, the Commission aims to improve visibility over how much energy and water data centres actually use and to make it clearer how they help or strain electricity systems. The proposal highlights that more sustainable and flexible data centres—able to adjust electricity use to grid conditions and to reuse waste heat—can lower the overall costs of the electricity system, improve grid stability and support integration of more renewable energy.
As an illustration, the Commission points to the potential scale of heat recovery: reusing around half of total waste heat from data centres across Europe would correspond to the heating demand of four million households.
What happens next
The legal proposal is subject to a two-month scrutiny period by the European Parliament and the Council. If the text clears that period and is adopted, implementation would proceed with the design and application of the rating scheme and the award of sustainability labels; the Commission anticipates the first labels to appear in 2027.
The concurrent call for evidence and public consultation on minimum performance standards will collect input before any binding technical requirements are finalised. The Commission has published related documentation including an Energy Efficiency of Data Centres report and a questions-and-answers briefing as part of the package.
