How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll • Hacker News Board

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#51

Post by will4274 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

pastage wrote: post #39

jve wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage. And then there is a PUE ratio which indicates how much power is to be used by feeding the equipment vs overall usage for supporting equipment (cooling). Just this week we launched a datacenter hat runs 100% on renewable energy even in case when diesel engines have to turn on and seeking LEED certification: https://delska.com/about/news-resources/delska-newsroom/dels...…

You do not want a modern datacenter near people.

Why? Datacenters have smaller effects on neighbors than other industries. No runoff like farming, no pollution like factories

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#52

Post by deburo » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #32

rceDia wrote: post #30

Data centers are uber resource hogs: land, water, power. They compete for the same resources as other industries but also against the local citizenry. Who benefits from mass consumption of the resources and at what cost. Age old debate.

Have you always had similar things to say about the paper industry?

Indeed, their argument makes no sense. They would probably complain about any industry building large factories. It seems they don't like progress, and not even the status quo, they would prefer regression.

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#53

Post by pas » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #42

TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're supposed to go blind with rage after "the EU".

I mean if you're gonna regulate, then regulate. But what's the point of making everyone do extra paperwork if there's no actual environmental effect of doing the paperwork because the big guys have loopholes

While the precedent is clearly bad individual DCs don't matter, as long as the actual consumption and environmental load correctly shows up in regional stats.

As long as they pay the quotas it doesn't matter. DCs don't eat the water, people can go and take samples, measure temperature. Heck, how complicated it will be to put out a solar panel powered thermometer with a SIM card? Or set up a drone with a IR camera to fly around a DC each day? If someone wants to carry out a crusade against DCs, sure, there's plenty of precedent for that too! (see Cervantes 1605 and 1615) And of course if hedge funds want to know when to short the AI bubble they'll be doing the same anyway, so the commission should ask them to publish their data with a few months lag.

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#54

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #26

TeMPOraL wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No fiduciary responsibility needed, democracy alone is enough to encourage corruption. For example, a company decision-maker responsible for picking the city/county/country in which their company will put a new factory is in position of great influence on municipal/regional/national level politics - simply because the people want jobs, and politicians want to be popular with the people.

> simply because the people want jobs To be more precise, the people want to live within a certain standard. I can’t think of anyone¹ who really wants a job . Purpose, something to do, money (which translates to standard of living), recognition, sure, but those don’t really necessitate a job, as in something you have to do on the regular to be able to survive through the indirection of money. The distinction is impor…

I agree, thanks for the correction. In the timeless words of 'nostromo:

No job is the goal. No money is the problem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987073

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#55

Post by pas » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #6

I have complete confidence the EU will realise this may violate transparency laws, it will go to court in 7-8 years, publish a response in the next 5 finally getting this law fixed in about 2040. They always get these things right, in the end

The obvious compromise seems to be to limit the duration of confidentiality to something reasonable. Let's say 1-2 years.

Furthermore the initial draft talked about aggregate data anyway. The EU really shouldn't care about individual DCs anyway.

As long as they keep the water clean (and pay for the relevant environmental load quotas) and have the permits who the fuck cares? It's idiotic anti-AI hysteria.

The quote about "ramping up their lobbying efforts" is also absurd, it's just a few lines after the paragraph that describes that the commission asked for feedback from the industry as part of some standard consultative process.

The most crazy part seems to be the commission's "we have always been at war with Eastasia" behavior regarding the confidentiality.

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#56

Post by jve » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

shimman wrote: post #36

jeffbee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you always had similar things to say about the paper industry?

Paper provides an actual utility that people want and serves a real human need. Hyper scale data centers only exist to make Garfield porn and help scammers.

You are using HN which may or may not be hosted in datacenter.

To reach HN you are probably hopping via some communication hubs that may be located in datacenter.

You are going to store to buy some stuff which probably hosts their infra in a datacenter or use datacenter services.

You do use mobile phone? Well they also need to host services somewhere and make connectivity.

The school where your kids go either uses school management software and/or websites which provide educational material or doing exams.

Then you have online video conferencing...

I mean this list could get pretty long - I think listing them here on HN is kind of useless. It is just the datacenter infra is at the very bottom, providing foundational but invisible service to end users. Just like we don't see how things are manufactured or how raw materials are sourced for making real stuff, same goes with datacenter.

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#57

Post by p4bl0 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

For what it's worth, an alternative data source [1] is being created by the DCWatch project [2].

[1] https://datacenters.hubblo.org/

[2] https://dcwatch.hubblo.org/

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#58

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#59

Post by voidfunc » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

shimman wrote: post #37

jampekka wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's that EU has illusion of regulation that is nerfed with either loopholes or lack of enforcement.

Nerfed carrying a lot of water here, neglecting the fact that big tech is successfully using the US federal government to threaten the whole of EU if they are slightly mean to Zuckerberg + friends.

I mean, thats the deal Europe signed up for after WW2.

Re: How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres' environmental toll

#60

Post by jeffbee » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

p4bl0 wrote: post #57

For what it's worth, an alternative data source [1] is being created by the DCWatch project [2]. [1] https://datacenters.hubblo.org/ [2] https://dcwatch.hubblo.org/

This is great. The presentation of #1 is a little awkward because it reflects the scope of their project, but gives the impression of geographic concentration.