France, Italy and eight other EU countries are pushing the European Commission to recognize nuclear power as a clean form of power for data centers, escalating a growing fight over the sustainability of the booming AI sector.
In a letter sent to Commission’s Energy Director-General Ditte Juul Jørgensen and seen by POLITICO, the countries — which also include Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Croatia and Romania — warn that proposed changes under the Energy Efficiency Directive do “not comply with the principle of technological neutrality” because they favor renewables over nuclear power, even though both are carbon-free.
The complaint comes before the Commission is expected to adopt a new sustainability label for data centers as part of its “tech sovereignty package” on June 3. The delegated act will introduce a rating scheme bringing more visibility on how data centers use electricity and water. But the draft version of it published by the Commission raised hackles in the industry, which claimed it would end up killing much-needed investments in the sector.
According to the letter, Commission officials argued during technical discussions that there was no political mandate to promote low-carbon energy sources other than renewables for powering data centers. The countries pushed back on that interpretation, pointing to recent comments from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backing nuclear energy, as well as the EU’s recently published small modular reactor strategy, which highlights nuclear’s role in powering data centers.
