Microsoft and other major US technology companies have influenced the European Union to include a confidentiality clause in its regulations that limits public access to the environmental impact data of datacentres. This clause, incorporated into EU rules in 2024 after industry lobbying, effectively conceals the pollution levels of individual datacentres, allowing only aggregated national energy usage data to be publicly available. Such secrecy restricts the ability of researchers to scrutinize the environmental footprint of these facilities.
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