Data centres as engines of Europe’s digital future - Can they power a sustainable energy transition?

About this episode

The episode discusses the role of data centres in Europe's digital future and their impact on energy consumption and sustainability efforts.

As Europe strives to position itself at the forefront of the global digital economy, data centres are emerging as the backbone of competitiveness and innovation, enabling digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cloud services, and the broader digital transition. This presents challenges due to rising energy consumption, which will need the development of large-scale renewable capacity to replace fossil fuels, alongside other substantial investments in grid infrastructure. As part of these efforts, the European Commission is set to publish early 2026 its Strategic Roadmap for digitalisation and artificial intelligence in the energy sector which will aim at accelerating the deployment of digital tools (including AI technologies) across key decarbonisation sectors, such as power-grid optimisation, energy efficiency, and demand-side flexibility. Panel 1: Powering the intelligence – How to integrate data centres in the EU energy system Data centres are highly resource-intensive, consuming large amounts of electricity and requiring considerable grid hosting capacity. Europe faces the challenge of finding ways to balance the future backbone of the digital economy with its…

Topics covered

• data centres
• digital economy
• sustainability
• energy transition
• decarbonisation
• renewable energy

Keywords

• data centres
• digitalisation
• energy consumption
• renewable energy
• decarbonisation
• AI technologies
• grid infrastructure

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: European Commission, EU, Energy Efficiency Directive

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