Mobilising against EU Proposed Cloud & AI Development Act

The Climate Justice Universities Union - in collaboration with Not Here Not Anywhere - submitted to Ireland' public consultation process to oppose the EU proposed Cloud and Development Act. Public mobilisation against this is urgently needed. Some highlights here and the full submission is linked in below.

• The EU Cloud and AI Development Act would oblige Member States to establish data centre acceleration zones which would have accelerated permitting, including a 12 month fast-track planning period.
• Some data centres could be designated as strategic projects and could benefit from EU funding.
• The Impact Assessment states that Ireland has 31MW of data centre capacity per 100,000 people, three times more than any other member state (2025 figures). The graph in the Impact Assessment (page 11) is quite striking (see screenshot above).
• The Commission's preferred policy option (PO1-B) is the most environmentally damaging option, increasing emissions by an estimated 82Mt CO2e above the baseline scenario. There is no modeling to show how this aligns with EU climate targets and the European Climate Law is not discussed in the section on policy coherence.