Overview
- A Greenpeace‑commissioned Öko‑Institut short study finds German data centres used about 13 billion litres of water for cooling in 2025 and projects up to 27 billion litres per year by 2030 if planned ‘mega’ centres proceed.
- The study estimates roughly 30 planned centres above 100 MW IT capacity could each need 200–930 million litres annually depending on cooling technology, creating acute local groundwater and ecosystem pressure in water‑stressed regions.
- Investigations by SWR, netzpolitik.org and others show many operators have not publicly posted legally required electricity and water consumption figures and the federal Rechenzentrumsregister contains incomplete or unusable entries.
- Industry groups warn of rising electricity demand and grid connection bottlenecks — Bitkom projects power use for German data centres rising from about 23 billion kWh now to 35–38 billion kWh by 2030 — while a proposed change to the Energy Efficiency Act would widen business‑secret exemptions and could reduce public disclosure further.
- Policymakers face clear choices: require mandatory water impact studies and closed‑loop cooling for sensitive sites, tighten register enforcement and permitting, or risk local conflicts, constrained grid access for other businesses, and limits on regional development.