Europe’s data centres: The nature report card
Across Europe, the growth of data centres is redefining how nature and technology coexist. Built on farmland, forest edges, and former industrial sites, they have become integral to both the digital economy and the continent’s environmental footprint. The accelerating demand for AI is intensifying the strain on resources, and the effects are already being felt.
As demand grows, Europe’s balance between digital progress and sustainability will rest on the choices of a handful of major technology companies, and it’s crucial that they get it right. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services operate most of the continent’s hyperscale capacity (alongside smaller developments from Meta and Apple) and, in doing so, set the standards that others follow. Their decisions directly influence whether Europe will meet its climate and biodiversity goals while expanding its digital infrastructure.
Our latest report explores what this could look like in practice, examining how the world’s largest tech companies currently integrate nature across their European data centre sites, and where gaps remain.
Caption: European data centres could require 3.5× more power than today. Source: McKinsey & Company
Like many others, I have often found myself asking: can artificial intelligence and nature really thrive together? Even with all the questions that surround it, the answer I keep returning to is yes.
Europe has been through a transformation like this before. During earlier waves of industrial growth, progress came with a cost: forests once covered roughly 80% of the continent, falling to less than half by the end of the seventeenth century. Habitats receded, and ecosystems across the continent were lost. Now, as the digital infrastructure required for AI spreads across those same landscapes, we are standing at a similar kind of threshold, but with a very different understanding of what is at stake.
For too long, the conversation has been framed as a trade-off: innovation versus conservation, progress versus protection. But that narrative no longer holds.
Technology can follow the extractive model of the last century, or the regenerative model of today. And the regenerative path offers something exciting: the chance to rebuild what was lost.
At its simplest, this means ensuring that data centres give back at least as much as they take, restoring nature at a scale that reflects their operational footprint.
There are signs of progress. This report looks at the operators that are integrating environmental considerations into their design and operations, moving beyond efficiency metrics to consider land, water, and resource stewardship.
I hope this report gives you a sense of optimism that amid the scale and speed of technological change, there are companies already working to prove that progress and restoration can go hand in hand.
