Announcing ‘Tech & the Planet’

Europe is in the middle of its most tumultuous  period in decades – geopolitically, technologically, and environmentally. Against this backdrop, its tech and climate agendas simply cannot afford to operate in parallel if the EU is to maintain its strategic autonomy and climate leadership. 

And yet, five years since the ‘ twin – digital and climate – transition’ first became an EU priority, policy frameworks remain patchy, and with them, our ability to shape our own future. What has emerged is an institutional architecture that pits these agendas against each other, treating short-term economic goals and long-term environmental ones as if they were in opposition.

Climate policy emphasises resilience and long-term stability, whereas tech policy pursues speed, scale, and competitiveness. Each performs well enough  in isolation. But without coordination, the performance falters. What should be synergy becomes divergence,  with choices  in one domain undermining progress in the other.

This is a transition trap: not a failure of intent, but a governance pattern in which fragmentation turns complementary goals into friction. The roots of this are institutional. Tech and climate became policy priorities at different times, under different leaders, and in different parts of the  European Commission.

What began as parallel workstreams has turned  into a governance blind spot – different sections of the orchestra playing from different scores. This isn’t a question of choosing  between tech ambition or climate action; it’s whether the EU  can govern them as the same transition.

This mismatch is what our new workstream Tech & the Planet aims to address – helping decision makers navigate the EU’s tech ambitions with its climate commitments before infrastructure decisions lock in incompatible pathways.

We’ll identify governance tools and policy frameworks that enable integrated decision-making – advancing both competitiveness and sustainability rather than forcing choices between them. More on that below.

Glaring governance gaps

This matters now because Europe is in a narrow window between design and lock-in, and examples from other regions show the stakes. Member states are making major infrastructure decisions in 2025-2027: siting data centres, expanding grids, allocating land – even as they implement the Fit for 55 package. These are decade-long commitments that will shape land and resource use well into the 2040s. Without anticipatory governance, poor choices trap member states into fossil fuel dependence, creating costly missteps that will take years to undo.

The United States  offers a cautionary tale: rising  energy demand from AI data centres is  keeping coal plants operational past their planned retirement, in one case delaying closure by 20 years to 2045,  and sparking construction of new gas capacity with 30-year lifespans. These are structural choices that will result in  higher emissions for at least a generation. Similar dilemmas – picking quick solutions over careful planning – are playing out in other regions. As the fastest-warming continent, Europe cannot afford to follow this trajectory.

The obstacle to a different outcome isn’t a lack of ambition, as is so often lamented, but an issue of coordination. Various plans – and the planners behind them – don’t talk to each other, with key initiatives pursuing specific objectives but overlooking interdependencies. For example, the AI Continent Action Plan outlines the EU’s technological path to AI leadership without adequate focus on its consequences for European Green Deal commitments. 

Likewise, the 2040 climate target communication  inadequately accounts for how rapid AI expansion will reshape energy demand – not to mention any wider economic, social or political  impacts. Meanwhile, regulatory simplifications aimed at boosting competitiveness are diluting environmental safeguards  even as energy-intensive AI infrastructure is being planned.

These governance gaps are now visible on the ground, particularly in debates over data centre expansion. In Marseille, Zeewolde, and across Ireland, communities are protesting rapid growth. Community backlash reflects concerns about electricity and water demand, land use,  and the distribution of costs and benefits. At the same time, developers face regulatory uncertainty, utilities are caught in the middle, and policymakers are tasked with high-stakes decisions – often without tools to evaluate climate, energy, and competitiveness in an integrated way.

When local impacts are immediate but collective benefits unclear, scepticism grows. Similar dynamics shaped earlier resistance to climate policy, where perceptions of unfairness and limited public consultation fuelled ‘greenlash’ in part. In the US, AI infrastructure has already become politically sensitive for similar reasons, giving rise to a nascent ‘techlash’ that cuts across political divisions. Wholesale  electricity costs have soared in areas near data centres compared to five years ago, with resentment over rising bills – amidst an affordability crisis – powerful enough to flip governor races.

Data centres are becoming one of Europe’s fastest-growing sources of electricity demand, even ahead of electric vehicles. If this demand outpaces renewables deployment, gas will likely remain the price-setting technology, risking the same household cost burden seen in  parts of the US. And if the upcoming Energy Omnibus weakens consumer protection under competitiveness pressures, the EU might just spark its own techlash. There is still time to turn these lessons into safeguards – but not for long.  

Beyond the first flashpoint

Data centres may be the most visible flashpoint of the governance gap today, but they certainly  won’t be the last. Over the coming decade, frontier technologies – from quantum computing to synthetic biology and space technologies – will place growing demands on energy, materials, land, and water. 

Without anticipatory governance, each technology risks assessment in isolation, with conflicts discovered only after infrastructure is built, investments committed, and pathways locked in. An anticipatory approach would identify trade-offs early and design synergies deliberately, ensuring that today’s investments leave Europe better positioned for the future, supporting sovereignty, resilience, and planetary stewardship.

Moving from reactive  to anticipatory governance means building  new governance capacity: tools that assess technological and environmental impacts together, policy frameworks that integrate climate and tech objectives, and foresight planning that brings technologists, grid operators, climate experts, industry, and communities together before decisions become irreversible. 

Initiatives like the  EuroStack illustrate the potential: mapping Europe’s digital infrastructure across technical, economic, and material layers to reveal interdependencies, target investments, and identify decisions that must be made correctly the first time. The Eurostack highlights what Europe needs to build. Anticipatory governance helps reveal how.

The policy foundation, however, is still somewhat thin. Unsurprisingly, data centre sustainability is emerging as a major policy challenge for 2026. The Energy Efficiency Directive has introduced  mandatory energy reporting for data centres while a new EU sustainability rating scheme and a strategic roadmap for digitalisation and AI in the energy sector aim to improve planning. These are meaningful steps forward. Measurement and transparency both matter.

But measurement alone will not prevent the transition trap. When strategies, directives, regulations, and action plans are laid side by side, shared decision points where the climate impacts of technology – or the tech implications of climate action – can be  assessed together remain scarce.

A moment for alignment and action

Promisingly, the EU is seeking a blueprint that aligns climate action, competitiveness, and strategic autonomy – where no priority is pursued at the expense of the others. The Commission’s 2026 work programme recognises the need for an enabling framework that secures sustainability and competitiveness, including through an Energy Union. The next step is to build the governance capacity to translate recognition into practice.

This is where  our new workstream on Tech & the Planet  comes in. Grounded in CFG’s expertise across technology governance – from monitoring enforcement of  the EU’s digital rulebook to researching trustworthy AI, responsibly scaling frontier technologies like biotech and neurotech through to applying a precautionary approach  to climate interventions – the workstream focuses specifically on the intersection of emerging technology and climate.

Starting with AI, where momentum is strongest and sustainability tensions most visible, Tech & the Planet identifies governance pathways that can help advance  the EU’s tech ambitions alongside its climate commitments ​​through policy tools and decision-making frameworks. These approaches can then be applied across the next generation of frontier technologies to support a shift from reactive, sector-by-sector policymaking towards anticipatory, system-level governance.

Some of the  key questions this workstream explores include: 

• Which policy and investment choices advance climate action and tech competitiveness together? 
• How can AI meet energy demand without locking Europe into fossil-fuel dependence? 
• How can Europe avoid techlash and deliver a fast and fair twin transformation?

Answering these questions demands new governance approaches. But tools and frameworks will not deliver alignment on their own. Governing tech and climate in sync also requires political choices about priorities, trade-offs, and timing. Doing so requires a specific kind of political courage: not sacrificing one goal for another or copying models from elsewhere, but rejecting false choices altogether.

Europe’s long-term prosperity depends on getting both transitions right and holding that line under short-term pressures. Speed and stewardship are not opposites but mutually reinforcing imperatives. The EU has an opportunity to finally play in concert – creating the harmony the twin transition was always  meant to produce.