Data Center Regulation Trends to Watch in 2025

Government bodies worldwide are putting regulations in place to improve the sustainability and resiliency of data centers. That, in turn, forces data center operators to implement new processes and procedures to meet the new requirements.  

The European Union’s revised Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), designed to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, requires data center owners and operators in its 27 member countries to report data on energy and water usage annually to an EU database – and the first deadline was mid-September of this year.  

Meanwhile, the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), approved in late 2022, requires financial institutions to strengthen resiliency by taking measures to mitigate cyber-attacks and ensure uptime. Starting January 2025, that includes developing and testing business continuity plans, performing penetration tests and vulnerability scans and doing remediation, and reporting any major incidents or face fines for noncompliance.  

“Governments rightfully want to understand data center energy usage and control it, and on the other level is the fact that IT operations are critical to our functional economy and our society. And if data centers go down, it’s going to get ugly fast, so they’re looking at how to prevent that,” said Jay Dietrich, the Uptime Institute’s research director of sustainability. 

DORA may emerge as a blueprint for other geographies and industries to develop data center regulations to strengthen digital resiliency, according to the Uptime Institute. Likewise, once the EU publishes valid data on energy and water consumption as required by the EED, Dietrich predicts that it will prompt governments in other geographies to follow suit.  

“My belief is that once Europe publishes the data, the United States will pull the trigger on something,” Dietrich said.  

But as the EU has learned, it’s one thing to pass regulations, it’s another to implement them. Reporting of EED data is off to a slow and shaky start as the EU Commission and member states continue to put the processes in place for data center operators to submit data, Dietrich said. 

Here’s a look at some of the data center regulations worldwide related to sustainability and resiliency, more details on the EED’s slow rollout and the necessary next steps the EU must take to work out the kinks, and what data center operators need to do to successfully comply when faced with new regulations. 

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