We talk a lot about transparency at the Green Web Foundation, particularly when it comes to digital infrastructure is powered. Were not the only ones though, and our friends at Algorithm Watch have a campaign to fight a the weakening of a datacentre law ,that if it was weakened like proposed would mean datacentres in Germany need to meet much lower efficiency standards, and disclose much less information than they need to today. Our director of policy and technology, Chris Adams gives the low down.
A bit of context: not our campaign, but transparency is a good thing if you want a fossil free internet.
As we’ve mentioned many, many times before – we want to see a fossil free internet by 2030, and we’re not alone. Our recent report, State of the Fossil Free internet opens with a visualisation of the hundreds of thousands of people checking their sites, and there’s a growing number of civil society organisations who also work on datacentre transparency too.
One example is the German organisation, Algorithm Watch, who have a campaign on specifically to fight this rollback. Given Germany has easily the largest datacentre sector in Europe, this matters, and while their campaign is mainly in German, and aimed at a German audience, they were kind enough to share a translation of what they’re pushing for in English below with us.
You can support their campaign on their dedicated site.
Next week, the Chancellor’ Merz’s Cabinet will vote on amendments to the Energy Efficiency Act in Germany. The proposed changes include:
↘️ a lowering of efficiency standards for data centers
🏗️ a drastic rollback of transparency requirements.
For this purpose, the economics ministry and its Minister, Katherina Reiche, are seeking to adopt the lobby demands of major tech companies —in some cases, word for word.
In our view, this is completely the wrong approach. We have four key demands for the federal government:
1️⃣ New data centers should only be approved if they can demonstrate that they are powered by additional renewable energy.
2️⃣ Operators must be required to publish their energy and water consumption on a binding and individual basis, i.e., for specific data centers. Unlike what is planned in the current draft bill, they should not be allowed to hide their consumption figures as “trade secrets.”
3️⃣ The prescribed efficiency standards must not be lowered.
4️⃣ The energy consumption of individual AI applications must be disclosed. Only this will enable a public debate on which AI applications are useful and which should potentially be restricted for climate and environmental protection reasons.
“The current draft effectively declares inefficiency and lack of transparency to be guiding principles of economic policy. This approach comes at the expense of the climate, the people living near data center sites, and, in some cases, consumers as well. Moreover, it does not benefit the European data center industry, but primarily the global tech giants,” comments AlgorithmWatch’s Senior Policy Manager for AI & Climate, Dr. Julian Bothe.
That is why AlgorithmWatch launched the petition “Climate Protection Instead of AI Mania” today. Chancellor Merz and Minister of Economic Affairs Reiche must not yield to pressure from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon and should instead ensure genuine transparency and sustainability of data centers.
