{"id":18307,"date":"2026-06-01T03:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T03:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/18307\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T03:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T03:41:13","slug":"brussels-to-big-tech-embrace-sustainable-ai-or-go-away-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/18307\/","title":{"rendered":"Brussels to Big Tech: Embrace sustainable AI or go away \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ireland has emerged as one of the early warning signs. Data centers now consume more than 20 percent of the country\u2019s electricity \u2014 the highest share per capita in the world \u2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/beyondfossilfuels.org\/2026\/05\/28\/as-europe-bets-on-ai-and-data-centres-ireland-shows-the-risk-higher-electricity-bills-for-households\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a report published last week<\/a> by Beyond Fossil Fuels and Friends of the Earth Ireland argued the boom has already added costs to household electricity bills.<\/p>\n<p>J\u00f8rgensen warned that unless the sector becomes more integrated into local energy systems, political backlash could grow. \u201cIf they see [sustainability] as a disadvantage, then probably we are at a bad place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>One of the commissioners\u2019s main concerns is the industry\u2019s limited use of waste heat from servers, which is often released unused into the atmosphere. \u201cIf we use just half of the excess waste heat today, we could heat 4 million European homes,\u201d J\u00f8rgensen said. \u201cThis is, in my view, unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked whether AI companies should help build and finance the energy infrastructure needed to power their data centers, J\u00f8rgensen said the approach would ultimately depend on national governments.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cThis will be very different from member state to member state,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there&#8217;s no doubt that these huge consumers of energy will also be driving the market, therefore supporting the transition that we want is important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Commission currently has little data available on the energy use of data centers. <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.politico.eu\/news\/213331\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Earlier reporting by POLITICO<\/a> showed only 36 percent of data centers required to report energy-efficiency data under EU rules had done so.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need more transparency because they are a very important player,&#8221; J\u00f8rgensen said. &#8220;It\u2019s also in their interest to show how well they&#8217;re doing and that they can be a part of the solution and not only a problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland has emerged as one of the early warning signs. Data centers now consume more than 20 percent&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[75,278,18,3607,400,79,4245,4651,466,10878,1676,11924,1404,318,249,1529,1407,82,2380,2912,87],"class_list":["post-18307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-big-tech","tag-brussels","tag-carbon","tag-china","tag-companies","tag-construction","tag-dan-jorgensen","tag-data","tag-data-centers","tag-development","tag-digitalization","tag-electricity","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-exclusive","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-intelligence","tag-nuclear-power","tag-recycling","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116672783024939077","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}