It's probably because directives have to be read into law at the country level.

(Directives are binding on states. They transpose them into national law, possibly adding additional clauses as it goes past (EU directives set a minimum standard, not a maximum) at which point they're binding on people.)

Nobody ever said the EU was efficient. Look for a deadline for that transposition on the original directive.

National governments kind of suck at enforcing these. In some cases, like the notorious Ireland Apple tax shelter, they may not want to enforce the rules because they feel they are benefiting from the evasion.

This kind of basic regulatory work is pretty thankless even when it's important. But I suspect the toxic politics of data centers will kick up some enforcement action sooner or later.

(Why is it so toxic? Well, the explicit promise from AI companies of mass unemployment combined with higher electricity prices, and maybe even destroy the world https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/09/anthropic... is why.)

It's probably because that 500kw number is too arbitrary. I work in a single warehouse with robotics based logistics that uses 500kw. Nobody is asking us how much water we use.

Reality is if a regulation is too broad it tends to get overwhelmed and dies when it requires 100 people to enforce.

Even a basic in house data center can push 100kw with a few servers.

Because it is an EU-DIRECTIVE.

Directives are not the same as regulations .

Directives are goals that must be achieved by adapting existing national laws or introducing new ones, and that takes time.

Perhaps this article is one step in the process of forcing disclosure. The Dutch parliament has recently (April 2026) clarified its law implementing the EED.

> If so, why would a private company provide this information?

Because the law says they have to.

Water usage in terms of total volume is meaningless and certainly an overblown concern on a global scale. In fact, it is not a concern at all on a global scale, but it can be a local problem. If a datacenter uses water normally intended for households and the infrastructure is not designed for this, it is definitely a problem. And that's a good reason for having to report water usage, not just to punish them, but also to plan distribution accordingly.

> the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry

Data centers tend to concentrate their water usage within urban areas, causing a strain on local resources. The value of their output is much less tangible. Their water consumption scales up around tenfold if you consider the indirect usage from generating the electricity.

But on the other hand; yes, it would also help enormously if people ate less meat.

Actually your premise is already wrong, although to be fair I'm not sure what bearing that has on the conclusion.

Here in France at least, companies can also be subject to FOIA requests for information pertaining to contracts they have with public entities. E.g. if a city publishes a tender to run tye local bike share program, then the company that gets the contract may have to directly answer (some) requests about that program.

But like I said, not sure if this applies to data centers which are, iiuc, mostly private ventures.

>And they also need to be built somewhere, and that place is probably best where electricity is abundant and/or cheap.

They don't need to be built at the scale they're being built at. That's the problem.

These are resources acquired from the governments in most places. You have to be able to plan and expand capacity which requires public funds.

I live right next to a waste valorisation plant[1]. They have to exactly specify what amount of water they use and what amount of water they then send out to the waste water treatment facility. It also has to be clean to a very specific standard before it leaves which is also checked.

We have datacenters in Switzerland too, but very little outrage or debate because there are strict rules in place in most places. They can build all they want but it costs significantly more to meet environmental requirements.

The valorisation plant next to my home has water cooling tower/fans significantly oversized just to make sure the noise is keep under the required level.

[1] https://stefan.schueller.net/posts/kva-winterthur/

>Look, I get it, many people are afraid of the societal impacts of AI, or distrust it in another way.

In the Netherlands it is not just about AI datacenters, even before the rise of AI pushback against Meta's planned datacenter made them cancel it. There has been a lot of criticism of the municipality that allowed Microsoft to expand its datacenters. The argument is that this is a small country that already has to make tradeoffs to get to its desired energy mix (wind turbines near cities on land) and then these datacenters are built that consume the power that is generated by sacrificing the little remaining open space. In the last few years there is actually a electricity shortage in some regions so "we can hook up this 200 MW datacenter but not your house" is a bad look.

> They refuse it because ...

It is completely irrelevant why they choose to refuse to provide this information.

From what I understand, disclosing this data is not optional. It is a law. And if they have willfully chosen to operate in a country where such a law applies, they have to obey that law.

If they are taking reasonable steps to mitigate consumption and pollution then they should be able to clearly explain that to the public. The fact they won't suggests they aren't.

Just because people haven't cared about the environment before doesn't mean they shouldn't start now. And just because there are worse existing polluters doesn't mean we shouldn't resist new ones.

A new golf course used to be seen as a great thing to have in your back yard and now we know their pesticide use increases the risk of Parkinson's. People are waking up and caring more. We need to have a sustainable society, not a profit obsessed one.

Most of it comes from concerns about water and electricity rates sky rocketing and also simply not being available when humans need it. At least at the local level.

Well, even if you're right, try proposing those bills and then reckon with the deafening wails of the "free-market-big-government-taxation-is-theft" crowd. And the politicians that are in the pockets of BigCo that will say that kind of stuff.

Policies are simple a lot of times. Politics against the interest of big money isn't.

If they pay market rate, the clearing price will go up making things more expensive for everyone. If they go off-grid they make the machines needed to produce water or electricity or whatever more expensive. If they borrow money, they make government bond yields go up and cause governments to start thinking about cutting pensions and stuff, not to mention increased mortgage rates for whoever wants to buy a home or is on a variable rate mortgage. There's no world in which this AI stuff doesn't increase costs for the rest of us.

They need to pay for the infrastructure upgrades to water and electric when it inevitably exceeds capacity

The main thing is evaporative cooling is incredibly wasteful. The water should be returned to the system, if it's going to be used, and not sent into the atmosphere. This is especially important in regions with limited access to water, which, ironically, is where many data centers seem to be located.