Overview
- The Greenpeace/Öko‑Institut study, released Wednesday, June 17, 2026, assessed about 6,700 data centers and found U.S. sites produce roughly 33% more greenhouse gases per unit of power than European sites.
- Researchers attribute the gap mainly to differences in local electricity mixes and a trend of increasing fossil‑fuel capacity in parts of the United States.
- The study criticizes the common practice of buying renewable energy certificates that have no physical connection to a data center because those purchases can leave coal and gas plants to fill real local demand.
- Greenpeace warns that continued construction of fossil power plants in the U.S. could raise U.S. data‑center carbon intensity to about twice Europe’s by 2030, a risk amplified because major cloud providers host over half their centers in the United States.
- To limit household and corporate electricity emissions as data demand grows the report calls on hyperscalers to source verifiable physical renewables, design for lower energy use, reuse data‑center waste heat, and pair capacity growth with added clean generation.