The green think tank Concito and the Danish data center industry association both say data centers need tighter regulation worldwide, as artificial intelligence pushes up electricity and water consumption.
DR reported on August 7 that both groups are backing calls for more regulation of data centers on a global level. According to DR, Concito argues that demands should be placed on the owners of AI systems to regulate what data centers do.
Torsten Hasforth, chief economist at Concito, pointed to countries where water is scarce or power access is already limited. He asked what happens when well funded operators seek to build data centers in places such as India or Kenya. As noted by DR, he is concerned about countries where protections for residents are weaker than in Denmark.
Save up to 2,800 DKK on Your Electricity Bill
FindElpriser helps you switch electricity providers quickly and easily.
Henrik Hansen, director of the industry association Datacenterindustrien, told DR that international focus on power and water use should increase. Per Hansen, if water is the main problem in a given region, regulation should target water and require operators to handle it. He warned that letting anyone establish facilities anywhere would create a large societal problem.
The association says there are currently about 55 data centers in Denmark, of which roughly 25 are larger facilities. Both Concito and Datacenterindustrien note that Denmark does not face the water access problems seen elsewhere. Hansen pointed to closed cooling systems and treated wastewater as ways to reduce the use of drinking water.
A United Nations report cited by DR estimates that AI’s share of total data center electricity use will rise from 20 percent in 2025 to 40 percent by 2030. OpenAI’s ChatGPT processes around 2.5 billion prompts per day. DR calculated that if all the world’s data centers were one country, they would rank 11th globally for electricity use, below France at 468 TWh and above Saudi Arabia at 422 TWh.
Pressure on the Danish grid
DR notes that there is a long queue to connect to the Danish electricity grid, and that the government will push power hungry data centers to the back of it. CNBC reported in May that grid operator Energinet had paused new connection agreements. About 60 GW of projects were waiting, against a national peak demand of roughly 7 GW.
CNBC added that data centers made up nearly a quarter of the prospective projects, about 14 GW. Law firm Plesner later stated that the pause was lifted on June 3, 2026, replaced by a new case processing model for larger customers.
Le Figaro reported that the government backed an emergency plan on June 29, 2026, creating four priority categories for grid access. Certain large energy users, including some data centers, would fall into the lowest tier. According to Computer Weekly, a broad political majority supported the plan, which is intended to apply from the next major connection round in autumn 2026.
