The Netherlands wants all EU member states to introduce stricter rules to curb the increasing power consumption of large data centres of tech companies.

The Netherlands, together with Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and Denmark, will propose new energy rules for tech companies next week, Bloomberg reports. This is done during a consultation between the energy ministers of the EU countries. Data centres are consuming more and more energy and already account for almost 3 percent of total power consumption in the EU.

Part of the proposal would be stricter reporting requirements for data centres, including on CO2 emissions, the use of renewable energy and the effectiveness of power, cooling and water use. The European Commission should also be able to set’ minimum performance criteria ‘ for tech companies.

Recently, the arrival of a huge data centre of Facebook parent company Meta in Zeewolde was held back, among other things because of concerns about the large electricity use of the complex, which would become the largest of its kind in Europe. In Luxembourg, similar criticism sounded about a plan for a large Google Data Center.