26 January 2026, DCpedia, Marco Verzijl

Article: Transparency about energy and water: why the data center sector has been on the brakes for ten years – and why it is no longer sustainable (Machine translated from Dutch)

With the growth of cloud and AI, the data center has definitively become
a public infrastructure issue. Not only in terms of space and grid capacity,
but especially in terms of energy and water impact. The reflex of the
sector in the Netherlands over the past ten years has often been
predictable: first put things into perspective with macro-statistics, then
negotiate definitions and measurement methods, and only report as a
last resort — when legislation is inevitable . The question is: why is that,
what role do industry associations NLdigital and the Dutch Data Center
Association (DDA) play, and to what extent do large (mostly American)
players steer this behavior?