One year after the adoption of the EU Green Deal, leading cloud infrastructure providers and data centre operators in Europe have signed up to a joint Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact – with this including the Alliance for the Strengthening of Digital Infrastructures in Germany, founded under the umbrella of the eco Association.

Conclusions for sustainable digitalisation were adopted at last week’s meeting of the EU Environment Council. Among other things, these stipulate that data centres should become climate-neutral by 2030.

The German Telecommunications Act is to be fundamentally reformed within this legislative term and an updated version of a joint draft act has just been published. eco denounces the overall chaotic legislative process which is occurring at the expense of content-related diligence and appropriate consultation with associations. In particular, eco criticises the fact that the amended act will create a new class of protection that will essentially place service providers under an increased level of risk.

The Association of the Internet Industry appeals to policy-makers to reset the timing for the deliberations on the German IT Security Act 2.0 and to await further developments at European level.

The quintessential message of eco at the German federal government's Digital Summit, titled “More Sustainability by Means of Digitalisation”: Digitalisation holds enormous potential for sustainability and climate protection.

Are European data centres ready for the climate targets of the EU Green Deal, to strengthen climate and environmental protection through digitalisation? A new study with best practices in the field of energy-efficient data centres formulates technological development potentials as well as policy recommendations.

Online presentation and discussion of Part 2 of the "Sustainability Potentials of Data Centres", a study carried out by the Borderstep Institute on behalf of the Alliance for the Strengthening of Digital Infrastructures in Germany, under the umbrella of the eco Association.

On Wednesday, 28 Oct. 2020, the German government's Digital Agenda Committee discussed data sovereignty in connection with the GAIA-X project. Andreas Weiss, eco Head of Digital Business Models, took part in the committee’s technical discussion.

At a virtual conference of European digital ministers being held today, an agreement is to be reached on the merging of European cloud capacities. For the Association of the Internet Industry, GAIA-X is considered to be a flagship project in this realm, offering the potential to fully exploit the opportunities of the data economy while at the same time making a reality out of the Digital Single Market.

According to a new survey commissioned by eco – Association of the Internet Industry,  56% of Germans  believe that digital technologies and applications can have a positive impact on the climate footprint in the future.