Resource consumption of many data centers is not publicly visible

Exclusive Despite legal obligation, consumption of many data centers not publicly visible As of: November 6th, 2026 • 6:04 a.m

Data centers use enormous amounts of electricity and water. Operators are legally obliged to publish their consumption. But SWR's inquiries to more than 30 companies show that many don't take transparency that seriously.

Today companies are opening their doors at “Open Data Center Day” and offering guided tours. They want to give “insights behind the scenes” and “create more transparency,” says the website of the organizer, the German Datacenter Association (GDA). The glass data center, so to speak.

Elsewhere, however, the industry doesn't take transparency quite as seriously. There are hundreds of thousands of servers in the data centers that require a lot of energy - according to the digital association Bitkom, almost four percent of the total electricity in Germany. Depending on the cooling technology, the water consumption is also enormous. According to the Energy Efficiency Act, operators are obliged to publish data on electricity and water consumption for every larger data center.

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However, research and inquiries by the SWR Data Lab to around 30 of Germany's largest operators show that more than half of them probably do not comply with this obligation. The SWR did not find the required information on the Internet. Many operators did not respond to inquiries or refused to provide information. These include market leaders such as Equinix, NTT and CloudHQ. This means that the electricity and water consumption of numerous large data centers remains hidden from the public.

Bernhard Wegener, Professor of Public Law and European Law at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, comes to the conclusion: "This practice is not compatible with the Energy Efficiency Act. The public has a right to this data." Julian Bothe, AI and sustainability expert at Algorithmwatch, criticizes the operators' lack of transparency: "We are in the middle of an energy price crisis and a water crisis."

In order to keep up with the international race, the federal government wants to double the performance of data centers by 2030. New plants are currently being built all over the country, many of them in regions where groundwater is already becoming scarce. The efficiency of the centers differs: some use significantly more electricity than others for the same service. "In order for us to be able to discuss this, it is necessary that the public knows about the resource consumption of individual data centers," says Bothe. According to Bitkom, there are currently 100 data centers in Germany with a connected load of five megawatts or more.

However, several operators contacted by SWR refuse to publish the data, citing business secrets. Equinix, one of the world's largest operators, argues that information about individual data centers could tell competitors where the company is growing and investing. For data centers with few customers, conclusions can also be drawn about their needs. Equinix believes it complies with "all applicable reporting and disclosure obligations under the Energy Efficiency Act."

However, it is questionable whether electricity and water consumption are actually secrets worth protecting. According to a report commissioned by Algorithmwatch, this is only likely to be the case in exceptional cases. Expert Wegener comes to a similar assessment.

Upon request, operator NTT will only provide total energy consumption for 2025, which corresponds to the annual consumption of around 450,000 households. NTT refuses to provide specific information about individual data centers, citing the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, which exempts operational and business secrets from the publication requirement.

In fact, unlike the EU directive, the German Energy Efficiency Act does not contain any exception for operational and business secrets. NTT did not want to comment further on the accusation of violating the German Energy Efficiency Act.

The Federal Office of Economics and Export Control is responsible for collecting the data. When asked by SWR, it was said that there were "no agreements to exclude certain information from publication due to operational and business secrets."

CloudHQ also did not provide SWR with the requested data. CloudHQ has not responded to allegations of violating the law.

The GDA, the industry association for data center operators, considers the companies' reluctance to be understandable. She points to the protection of digital infrastructure: data centers are highly sensitive facilities whose security has the highest priority.

The Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWE) confirms that companies must disclose their resource consumption. In August, the ministry published the National Data Center Register (RZReg). Of the 100 largest data centers in Germany, however, only just under one in four are listed there. According to BMWE, many operators have submitted their data to the ministry but have not agreed to publication in the RZReg. Where the operators disclose their information is up to them.

The GDA writes: It cannot be concluded from an unanswered press query alone that the operators are violating their legal obligations.

However, the SWR could not find the key figures on the websites of most operators. Although numerous companies are suspected of violating the publication obligation, the BMWE considers controls to be "not necessary" - after all, it is a "generally valid legal obligation". Legal scientist Wegener considers this approach to be “problematic in terms of the rule of law”.

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A planned change to the Energy Efficiency Act could further limit transparency. It provides for the exemption of company and business secrets from the publication requirement. The federal government would thereby meet the demands of Bitkom and GDA. Julian Bothe from Algorithmwatch suspects that operators do not want to disclose "how much electricity consumption is already and how much energy is wasted due to inefficiencies."

Such a confidentiality clause is already included in EU law. According to research by Die Zeit, it was adopted almost word for word by a lobby association and may violate the Aarhus Convention, according to which environmental information must be publicly accessible.

If the Bundestag passes the amendment, operators would be able to more easily classify their resource consumption as a business secret in the future. It would then be even more difficult for the public to understand how much electricity and water individual data centers actually use.

This topic in the program: tagesschau.de | Data centers apparently hide their consumption | 11/06/2026 | 06:00 am