Legislation on data centers

Table of contents

Legislation in Europe

Due to the enormous growth of data centers, more and more legislation in the is being applied on the datacenter & IT industry. At the moment the European Commission are taking the lead in this, especially with the EU Taxonomy and the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED)

We need more legislation to become more energy efficient and sustainable

More information can be found at the following

here

from the European Commission

The Energy Efficiency Directive promotes the energy efficiency and sustainability of data centres.

This initiative will develop a common EU scheme for rating the sustainability of data centres in Europe based on Article 33(3) of the Directive. This should also simplify the reporting scheme that was introduced under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364.

More information about the rating scheme can be found at this

here

Legislation in the Netherlands

For several years, the Dutch government implemented regulations specifically for data centers. Especially the Amsterdam city council and the province of North Holland have meant a lot in this.

For many years now, the Netherlands has been a leader in energy efficiency in data centers, partly due to regulations.

The latest regulations on energy efficiency in the Netherlands can be found at the website of the RVO.

Overview of the current measures

Category	ID	Description
Server room	FI1	Apply virtualization and consolidation to servers
Server room	FI2	Set up automated power management on servers
Server room	FI3	Take out a low-load Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS)
Server room	FI4	Use an outside air damper to cool the server room
Server room	FI5	Use an energy-efficient cooling system for cooling of server rooms
Server room	FI6	Provide a separation between the cold supply air and the warm exhaust air in the data room.
Data center	PH1	Set a higher cooling temperature for cooling servers
Data center	PH2	Use a frequency converter to increase the power of the limit room coolers
Data center	PH3	Apply free cooling to the cooling installation in the data center