*Climate Goals Be Gone: Data Center Lobbyists Hard-Drilling Their Way
Through EU Environmental Laws*
Jun 21, 2026
The European AI Action Plan boasts the ambitious goal of tripling data
center power capacity in roughly five years—a target that could clash
with the actual capabilities of today’s electric grid. This limitation
has become the focal point of international political clashes, with
various nations vigorously debating which direction to take in building
new power plants. Meanwhile, the sector’s lobby is pressuring
institutions to set aside predetermined environmental objectives to
focus exclusively on data center development.
The European Union, like other major global powers, sees cloud
computing, big data, and artificial intelligence as the future of
economy, work, security, and Defense. These digital resources often
intertwine with one another but all rest on infrastructures that, with
the progressive evolution of technology, require an increasingly large
amount of energy resources. To understand how electricity demand is
evolving, financial consulting firm S&P Global estimates that European
data center energy demand will double by 2030. In response to this
phenomenon, the influence of the European Nuclear Alliance is growing at
the same pace, an organization that Italy also officially joined last year.
According to the European Data Center Association (EUDCA) lobby, neither
the renewed interest in nuclear power nor that in renewables will allow
Europe to meet the urgency of energy production and distribution. Or, to
be precise, the group doubts that the interventions planned to meet
demand will be completed within the established timelines. “Every good
idea is currently hampered by the certainty, on paper, that everything
will move within the predicted timelines,” lamented Lex Coors, president
of EUDCA, according to Politico.
[...]
continua qui:
https://italiantimes.substack.com/p/climate-goals-be-gone-data-center_______________________________________________
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