When the European Parliament adopted new rules for disclosure of energy consumption in 2023, doctoral researcher Marloes de Valk “opened the champagne”. At the time, she was working on a thesis at London South Bank University on the added value of energy-efficient ICT, and got stuck due to a lack of figures. De Valk was unable to obtain hard data on the power consumption of data centers, not even in the Netherlands. Yes, there were aggregated consumption data, national forecasts and estimates, but none of them were precise enough for academic research. “A scarcity of power will only increase due to AI, which requires a lot of computing power. We must be able to conduct research into this.”
De Valk learned nothing from the tech companies themselves. The annual reports and sustainability reports of the large data centers – in the Netherlands these are the hyperscales from Microsoft and Google in Eemshaven and Middenmeer – did not provide any insight into how much power they consume. “They only mention something about the ‘PUE’, the energy efficiency per server, completely useless.”
The new European energy efficiency directive, the EED, was supposed to change that. The European directive forces companies to be transparent about their energy consumption and to make more efforts to save energy. All major companies in Europe, including data centers, must therefore annually report their energy and water consumption to their own government from 2024. In the Netherlands this is with the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, the RVO.
De Valk wanted to know how much demand data centers place on the power grid in the Netherlands. But when she requested the figures for the large data centers for 2024 from the RVO, she still received nothing. Microsoft had left blank the fields in the spreadsheets in which the company had to enter the electricity and water consumption. Some data centers were missing. Google had not submitted anything at all. The following year, the companies sent more, but again left most relevant fields empty. The reason: the Americans interpret European rules to their own advantage and so far no European country has wanted to argue with the American tech giants about their energy use. Not even the Netherlands.
De Valk experienced this, and he asked the RVO for clarification. She steers NRC the answers the service gave her to her questions about the hyperscales at Middenmeer. “It is true that a large number of the questions have not been completed,” the service wrote to her. “We have no legal means to force data centers.”
Now she still didn’t have the data. De Valk: “Isn’t it bizarre that as a researcher at a university you have no way of gaining insight into consumption? What good are these new rules then?”
Reporting standard
Data centers place a large burden on the Dutch power grid – an unwelcome fact now that the grid has become overloaded in several places in the Netherlands and companies and residential areas cannot be connected. The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) recently calculated that the total power consumption of data centers would increase to more than 5,000 gigawatt hours in 2024, 4.5 percent of the total power consumption of the Netherlands – as much as the consumption of 2 million households. And that is without counting all current requests for power connections. The network operators who know these requests register their most recent future scenario that in five years the power consumption of data centers will have grown from 5 to 15 percent of the total in the Netherlands.
This does not only happen in the Netherlands. Tech giants worldwide are taking unconventional measures to obtain electricity. For example, last month it was announced that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is acquiring the American energy company Intersect Power for the equivalent of $4.3 billion to secure its own power supply.
It is mainly the American owners and operators of data centers who keep their power consumption in the Netherlands secret and therefore do not comply with the European reporting directive. Dutch owners often filled in the data. This is evident from an inventory of the forms that the RVO received from Leitmotiv in 2025, about which nu.nl also recently published. This NGO consists of a group of lawyers and computer scientists who advocate a “digital economy in which the benefits of digitalization are distributed fairly and democratically.”
Of the approximately 160 data centers that were supposed to report, 104 actually sent something to the RVO, Leitmotiv counted. 27 data centers left the most important fields for power and water consumption empty. All but three of these were in American hands. Microsoft and Google, which are among the largest power consumers in the Netherlands, also did not report. Christiaan van Veen of Leitmotiv: “The EU and the Netherlands have imposed transparency obligations on data centers in order to make better policies, including about their energy consumption. But that goal will not be achieved if the largest companies in this sector simply refuse to be more open.”
The parties defend themselves with the argument that they are not obliged to disclose business-sensitive data. In response to questions from NRC, Google writes that it does not share data due to “business confidentiality, as determined in the European directive and recognized in the reporting guidelines of the Dutch government.” A Microsoft spokesperson said their reporting “meets the requirements where we have carefully balanced transparency, security and business confidential information.” She would like to say something about the efficiency of the computer equipment, which she is “continually working on”. This is “well below the industry standard” – very economical.
Confidentiality is indeed allowed, the RVO will let you know when requested. “In 2024, companies did not have to provide business-sensitive information. That was not a violation of the current regulations in the Netherlands.” By 2025, companies must do this, but “they may indicate that this is business-sensitive information and it will only be made public at an aggregated level by the European database.”
Postdoctoral researcher Fieke Jansen from the University of Amsterdam, also co-founder of the ‘critical infrastructure lab‘ from the university, criticizes this lax attitude of governments. “What are they making difficult? Which is very strange when you have to govern a country in which schools and neighborhoods cannot be connected to the grid due to a power shortage.”
She also sees this weak attitude in Brussels, says Jansen. As a scientist, she is also invited to European Commission roundtable discussions on energy and data centers. “Just this year, someone from the Energy Directorate said: ‘We are not going to publish the consumption data per data center anyway, because if we do that they will no longer provide anything at all.’ What kind of setup is that? Just claim it.”
Tightness is increasing
The lack of openness about power consumption also hinders local politicians and administrators in making policy. This became apparent this month during the decision-making process on the so-called ‘regional advice’ on a new high-voltage route for the heavily overloaded electricity grid in the north of North Holland. The province and 25 municipalities had to send this advice to Minister Sophie Hermans (Climate and Green Growth, VVD) in mid-December.
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The water board is strongly against a high-voltage station right next to the Google and Microsoft hyperscales in the Wieringermeer, meters below sea level
Various governments in the province clash over where exactly the high-voltage line should be located, as well as over the best location of a new high-voltage substation, which is located right next to the hyperscales in Middenmeer. Microsoft and Google recently announced major expansions of their data centers, while the North Holland grid is now so full that new applicants for a power connection have to wait ten years before it can be installed.
The discussion about the usefulness and necessity of the new high-voltage route also lacks insight into the burden that these hyperscales and their extensions place on the grid. Local administrators and representatives do not know how much electricity these companies use, while municipalities and provinces are the competent authority over the arrival of data centers.
And that’s just about quantity. There is another topic that is being discussed in Europe, but also in the Netherlands, says researcher Fieke Jansen from the University of Amsterdam. “What happens in the data centers? What is the scarce power used for? Facebook’s ‘Metaverse’? YouTube videos? Bitcoin mining? And do we find that useful enough to sacrifice the construction of a residential area in Almere for it? We make no choices, while the grid is at its limit.”
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