In an article on the energate messenger website, Kirsten Jöhlinger captures the tension between Germany’s obligation to implement the EU Energy Efficiency Directive and its proposed relaxation of existing national requirements, while highlighting the growing importance of data centres in the debate.
New energy efficiency targets divide experts
Germany continues to lag behind in implementing the EU Energy Efficiency Directive. The bill to ‘Accelerating the Implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive’ is intended to remedy this and also to water down the requirements set out in the Energy Efficiency Act. At the expert hearing held by the Bundestag’s Energy Committee, data centres once again took centre stage in the debate. Günter Eggers, a board member of the German Datacenter Association, welcomed the requirements imposed on data centres by the draft bill adopted by the Federal Cabinet in June. However, Eggers said the requirements must be technically sound, verifiable and actually achievable by operators. In contrast, Julian Bothe, Senior Policy Manager at the NGO Algorithmwatch, that the planned amendment to the Energy Efficiency Act and the retention of the provision under which data centres are only obliged to account for the use of renewable energy would lead to an increase in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Data centres would also drive up demand for electricity and, consequently, energy costs for the German economy as a whole.
The draft bill extends the transition period for new data centres to comply with efficiency targets from two to four years. They are also given three additional years to switch 100 per cent of their electricity consumption to renewable energy – by 1 January 2030. Furthermore, the draft bill relaxes the requirements regarding the use of waste heat: data centre operators are only required to utilise waste heat if a district heating network is in place.
Debate over requirements
The experts were not only at odds over the requirements for data centres. Whilst Erik Pfeifer, Head of the Operational Climate Protection Unit at the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), urged that the European directive be adopted in its entirety and that national savings targets be scrapped, Steffen Laube, specialist advisor for the ‘Future Dialogue on Industry’ at the Bellona think tank, argued that, in the long term, companies would benefit from stricter efficiency requirements. According to Christian Noll, Executive Director at the German Business Initiative for Energy Efficiency (Deneff), the watering down of building energy law and the mere announcement of plans to weaken the Energy Efficiency Act (EnEfG) have exacerbated the investment backlog. With the standards established in the EnEfG, companies would have a clear course of action that strengthens their competitiveness, Noll stated in his comments.
Germany was actually due to transpose the European directive by 10 October 2025. The federal government intends to transpose the European directive one-to-one into German law. Existing obligations for companies are to be relaxed as a result.
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