Abstract
The presented research introduces the issue of data-centre growth and point out potentially neglected elements in the EU’s legal efforts towards regulating data-centres’ environmental impact. It describes the business models that characterise them, and the common features that the industry seems to share. It also describes the problem of data centre growth in certain countries and contextualises it within Covid-19 and the energy crisis. Through the presentation, it dives deeper into the EU’s response to data-centre growth in times of energy crisis and analyses the provisions of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the Taxonomy Regulation, and the Energy Efficiency Directive (recast) relevant to data-centres. Here, it notes that there are at least three aspects of regulating data-centres from the environmental point of view that are currently left out of the picture of the EU’s regulatory instruments: (a) the issue of security in the industry and how it affects the availability of environmental information, (b) the extensive reliance of existing regulation on non-financial auditing, (c) the lack of a developed concept of social licence for data-centres. These aspects could potentially undermine the compliance with the EU’s foreseen reporting obligations or make these same obligations insufficient. In sum, the research argues that it is necessary to open a deeper academic debate on how to regulate data-centres and their environmental impact, in order to find legal instruments to better deal with data-centre growth in the longer run.
Participate
This event is open to everyone interested.