The European Commission has opened a four-week public consultation on a draft regulation that would create a single EU-wide energy efficiency rating scheme for data centres, with feedback due by 23 April 2026.
Data centres — facilities that house computer servers used to run online services and store data — are part of the information and communication technology sector, which is among the fastest-growing in Europe and globally, the Commission said in a statement on Friday.
That growth is linked to challenges around energy use, pressure on electricity grids, carbon emissions and the use of resources such as water.
The Commission said it took a first step in March 2024 by introducing rules for a European database on data centres and a reporting scheme to collect information and key performance indicators that would feed into an EU rating scheme (EU/2024/1364).
How the rating would work
Under the second step now out for feedback, the draft regulation sets out how the collected information would be used to rate data centres, with ratings made available via electronic labels issued automatically by the European database on data centres, the Commission said.
The draft outlines the rating scheme as a way to make data centres’ energy use more transparent and to support policy-making and procurement related to digital services.
The regulation is scheduled for adoption in the second quarter of 2026 as part of a data centre energy efficiency package.
