Data Centres in Europe – Reporting Scheme

The European Commission introduced in (European Commission, 2024) a reporting scheme for data centres in Europe to enhance transparency and sustainability. The ICT sector’s energy consumption is growing, with data centres’ electricity demand projected to reach 3.2% by 2030, which is a 28% increase with respect to 2018. Hence, this initiative aims to collect data such as energy consumption, water usage, and energy efficiency from data centers. The overall goal is to improve the environmental performance of data centers and support the EU’s climate and energy targets. The scheme involves regular reporting and monitoring to ensure compliance and progress towards sustainability goals. All reporting data centres must monitor, gather and communicate/input the information and key performance indicators (KPIs) to the European database on data centres. 

Annex I and II include guidelines on the reporting requirements specifying the types of data to be collected, the frequency of reporting (i.e., calendar year), and the methodologies to be used for measuring the data. Some key performance indicators relevant to EXIGENCE are: 

• Installed information technology power demand (“PD_ΙT”, in kW): the sum of the nominal power demand, in kW, of the network or networks, servers and storage equipment installed in the data centre computer room floor area.  

• Total energy consumption (“E_DC”, in kWh): Total energy used by the data center including the use of electricity, fuels and other energy sources used for cooling. 

• Total energy consumption of information technology equipment (“E_IT”, in kWh): combined annual energy consumption at every uninterruptible power system (UPS) connected to data centre information technology equipment. 

• Average Battery capacity (“C_BtG”, in kW): The average capacity of backup batteries used in the data centre. 

• Total renewable energy consumption (“E_RES-TOT”, in kWh): Amount of energy sourced from renewable resources, E_RES-TOT = E_RES-GOO +  E_RES-PPA  + E_RES-OS 

1. E_RES-GOO: Total renewable energy consumption from Guarantees of Origin  
2. E_RES-PPA: Total renewable energy consumption from Power Purchasing Agreements  
3. E_RES-OS: Total renewable energy consumption from on-site renewables 

• ICT capacity for servers (“C_SERV”): the sum of the SERT active state performance or equivalent for all servers. 

• ICT capacity for storage equipment (“C_STOR”, in petabytes): the total raw (addressable) capacity of all SSD and HDD devices in the storage equipment, as specified by the manufacturer. 

• Incoming traffic bandwidth (“B_IN”, in gigabytes per second): total provisioned bandwidth for incoming traffic, aggregated for all connectivity capacity and averaged annually. 

• Outgoing traffic bandwidth (“B_OUT”, in gigabytes per second): total provisioned bandwidth for outgoing traffic from the data centre aggregated for all connectivity capacity and averaged annually. 

• Incoming data traffic (“T_IN”, in exabytes): total incoming data to the data centre aggregated over the course of the reporting year. 

• Outgoing data traffic (“T_OUT”, in exabytes): total outgoing data from the data centre aggregated over the course of the reporting year. 

Furthermore, Annex III sets the data centre sustainability indicators and the methodology for their calculation, including: 

• Power usage effectiveness (PUE): PUE = E_DC/E_IT;   

• Renewable Energy Factor (REF): ERF = E_REUSE/E_DC;