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

Microsoft and DigitalEurope pushed a 2024 EU confidentiality clause that blocks public access to individual data-centre energy and water metrics. The article says the EU plans to triple capacity in five years with €176 billion expected investment; 10 legal scholars said the clause may breach the Aarhus Convention, and a 2025 Commission email told member states to keep individual KPIs confidential.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: the hook is sharp, the sourcing is concrete, and the topic hits a live AI-infrastructure nerve. This is not a model launch, but it materially sharpens the debate on data-centre transparency, so it clears featured, not p1.