Most data centers refusing to say how much water, electricity they use
- ID
- 30942
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 30 Sep 2026, 6:49 PM
- Fetched
- 02 Oct 2026, 4:44 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://nltimes.nl/2026/09/30/data-centers-refusing-say-much-water-electricity-use
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 02 Oct 2026, 4:45 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_ml_learnerssaas_founders
What happened
NL Times reports that most data centers are refusing to say how much water and electricity they use, a story tagged to Dutch agencies RVO and Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the European Energy Efficiency Directive, and a 'Lighthouse Report', plus grid congestion and drought. The Hacker News thread drew 215 points and 197 comments. The excerpt supplied here cuts off before the article body, so no specific figures, named operators, or methodology can be confirmed from this text.
Why it matters
The disclosure fight is tied, per the article's own tags, to the European Energy Efficiency Directive and Dutch reporting bodies — so if you procure colo or cloud capacity in the EU, treat vendor sustainability numbers as unverified until the operator publishes facility-level water and power figures. Because the body is missing from this excerpt, don't repeat any statistic from the headline in your own docs or pitches; read the full piece first.
Discussion angle
Ask one concrete question of your own provider: what are the monthly MWh and litres of water for the specific facility hosting your workloads, in writing? Then compare that to what the European Energy Efficiency Directive would compel them to publish — the gap is the story.