Europe's Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact

The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, a movement launched in January 2021 to tackle data centers' environmental impact, has made big moves this week. Cloud and datacenter giants in the movement have taken 19 proposals to the European Union (EU), which outline their "ambitious targets" to make the sector climate neutral by 2030. This target, if achieved, will contribute to Europe's hope of becoming a climate-neutral continent by 2050.

On top of these commitments, the Pact now has a total of 54 members and 22 associations, after IBM, Intel, Kao Data,EcoDataCenters, and Switch Datacenters recently became signatories and industry associations Bitkcom, Data Center United, and FDCF joined. This represents 90% of Europe's cloud and data center sector.

The "Self-Regulatory Initiative Policy Proposal" covers energy efficiency, water conservation, heat recovery and encourages green energy. Specifically, it calls for financial support to be provided to small and medium enterprise (SME) data center operators to help them with energy efficiency measures. Meanwhile, regarding water conservation, the Pact proposes that industrial and non-potable water is used in facilities rather than drinkable water. Elsewhere, the signatories also pledge to purchase 100% carbon-free energy by 2030.