EnEfG Hearing: Six Statements on Germany’s Data-Centre Rules

Key takeaways

• The bill (BT-Drs. 21/8027) raises the power usage effectiveness (PUE) limit for existing data centres from 1.5 to 1.6 (from 1 July 2027) and from 1.3 to 1.4 (from 1 July 2030). New data centres stay at 1.2, but get four years instead of two to reach it.
• It also changes who is covered. A data centre would start at 500 kW of installed IT power, where the law in force starts at 300 kW of non-redundant connected power. These are two different measures, so a site can move in or out of scope.
• Of the six written statements for the hearing on 5 October 2026, three (DENEFF, AlgorithmWatch, Umweltinstitut München) want the current PUE limits kept. One (Prof. Sven-Joachim Otto) backs the bill, with a review clause and a limited Design-PUE for low-load phases. Two (the municipal associations) say little or nothing about PUE.
• No operator or industry association has a published written statement. The German Datacenter Association and the DIHK are on the expert list, so their view will only be heard in the room.
• The current EnEfG applies until an amending law enters into force. Plan against the law in force and track the bill as a second scenario.

Germany’s government wants to relax its data-centre efficiency law for existing sites, shrink the group of sites it covers and replace the duty to reuse waste heat with a cost-benefit check. Six written statements go to the Bundestag committee for economics and energy on Monday 5 October 2026. The three that say most about data centres want the current limits kept, and one backs the bill. Until an amending law enters into force, the Energy Efficiency Act (EnEfG) of 2023 stays in force, with a PUE ceiling of 1.5 from 1 July 2027 for existing sites. PUE is the total energy a data centre uses divided by the energy its IT equipment uses. A PUE of 1.5 means 50 kWh of cooling and other overhead for every 100 kWh the servers draw.

The hearing runs from 14:30 to 16:00 CEST in room 3.101 of the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus and is streamed live. The agenda covers the bill and two opposition motions: 21/8139 from the Greens and 21/8111 from Die Linke. The Bundestag held the first reading on 24 September 2026. This article sets the bill beside the law in force, then reads what the statements tell MPs. Our regulation tracker will follow the outcome.

One caution applies to everything below. The bill is a pre-publication version (“Vorabfassung”), and the Bundestag will replace it with an edited text. Wording and page numbers can still change, and so can the content if the committee amends it.

What the bill changes for data centres

Two features of the bill get less attention than the PUE numbers. First, the move from 300 kW of connected power to 500 kW of IT power compares two different quantities. A site with 600 kW of connected power and 450 kW of IT load is covered today and would fall outside the bill. The bill says it aligns the definition with the EU statistics regulation (p. 60) and expects fewer new sites to need PUE 1.2 (p. 44). It assumes that 15% of new data centres fall below the new threshold (p. 82). Second, the ramp for new sites doubles from two years to four. That gives a new hall more time to run at low load before the 1.2 limit applies. The government explains the ramp in the section on the PUE changes (p. 65).

The government also puts a price on the package. It says industry saves a one-off €2.9 billion until 2030 from the higher PUE ceilings. The sum rests on about 195 data centres above 500 kW IT power at €2,300 per kW of cooling upgrade (p. 43 to 44). Page 43 describes the base as existing sites with a PUE above 1.4, but the 195 sites are counted as all sites above 500 kW IT power in a dataset of 463. The text does not say whether the two groups are the same, and the government itself calls the estimate uncertain. Read €2.9 billion as a government estimate. It counts about €130 million a year of further relief from the waste-heat change, for industrial plants, energy suppliers and data centres together (p. 44 to 45).

What the six statements say

The committee published six written statements on the hearing page. Two statements need a caution first. DENEFF models new data centres moving from PUE 1.2 to 1.4 (p. 9), a change that is not in the bill, which keeps 1.2 for new sites. The statement does not say which draft it models, and its formulation table is headed with the cabinet draft. Umweltinstitut München attacks a new-build limit of 1.3 and a Design-PUE (p. 9), and says it comments on the ministry’s first draft (p. 8). Read those parts as responses to earlier text, not as descriptions of the bill. The Städtetag statement also mixes drafts and overstates how the 23.6 GWh threshold applies to data centres.

DENEFF. The association wants the 1.5 and 1.3 values back and the 300 kW threshold restored (pp. 10 and 17). It also wants the general duty to avoid and reuse waste heat to stay, because a cost-benefit analysis cannot replace acting on a good result (p. 7). In its words: “Every tenth of a PUE point matters for electricity and system costs” (ScienceShot’s translation, p. 8).

AlgorithmWatch. Dr. Julian Bothe writes that “the current PUE limits should be kept” (ScienceShot’s translation, p. 2). The statement argues that grid connections, not the EnEfG, limit data-centre build-out (p. 5), and that about 40% of the 319 sites that published their own data already reach 1.3 (p. 7). It wants the renewable date of 2027 kept and, for sites above 20 MW, supply matched to demand every quarter of an hour (pp. 13 to 15). AlgorithmWatch is an advocacy group and co-author of the TWh studies it cites, so those figures come from one side of the debate.

Umweltinstitut München. It calls the move from 1.5 and 1.3 to 1.6 and 1.4 not comprehensible, because it expects existing sites to average 1.4 in 2026 and 1.2 by 2030, based on a Borderstep model and the register (pp. 8 to 9). It reads the register this way: 485 reporting sites, with an average PUE of 1.69 in the 2 to 10 MW segment and 1.38 for very large sites (p. 8). It also says more than 97% of data-centre heat is not reused (p. 8).

Prof. Otto. He agrees with the bill in principle, supports the moderate loosening for existing sites and backs the 500 kW threshold because it matches EU reporting (pp. 3 and 13). He argues that the German rules go beyond Union law, and he proposes a new § 11(6): a government review of §§ 11 to 13 at the latest six months after EU minimum requirements take effect. The national rules “should therefore be explicitly designed as a bridging solution” (ScienceShot’s translation, p. 14). He also proposes a new sentence in § 11(2): the PUE limit counts as met while average IT utilisation stays below 50% and an independent expert certifies compliance at 80% load (pp. 14 to 15). That is a limited Design-PUE, and the government left the Design-PUE out (p. 115). He rejects extra-renewable or hour-by-hour supply rules because they “would make the location considerably more expensive” (p. 15).

The Städtetag adds one point that bears on data centres. It calls the end of the duty to keep heat-supply infrastructure ready “problematic” and says the bill’s reserved space falls short. It warns that this could undermine municipal heat plans (pp. 5 to 6). The Landkreistag statement does not mention data centres (six pages).

The industry voice is missing from the written record. The expert list names Günter Eggers of the German Datacenter Association (nominated by the CDU/CSU) and Erik Pfeifer of the DIHK, the German chamber of commerce federation. The hearing page showed no written statement from either on 4 October. Statements may still be added, and oral remarks can differ from written ones.

Where they disagree, and what decides it

Both sides read the same register, and nobody has reconciled the two readings. The opponents point to sites that already beat the limits. The government points to older halls with redundancy and availability needs, and to the cost of rebuilding cooling. The counts also differ. The bill’s dataset has 463 data centres (p. 44) and Umweltinstitut München counts 485 in the register, and no document explains the gap. AlgorithmWatch’s 319 is a subset: the sites that published their data individually. For the size of the stock, the bill cites industry figures of about 1,200 German data centres (p. 44), where the Umweltinstitut estimates about 2,000.

Three disputes matter most to an operator. On PUE, Otto backs the government’s loosening for existing sites, though he wants a limited Design-PUE that the government did not adopt. DENEFF, AlgorithmWatch, Umweltinstitut and the Greens motion want the current limits kept. On disclosure, the question is whether the new trade-secret sentence overrides the duty to publish. AlgorithmWatch notes that the draft says “or” between Union law and national law where Article 12 of the EU directive says “and” (p. 12), which widens the exception. On waste heat, the bill swaps a duty to reuse for a duty to calculate, and only Otto welcomes that.

What decides it lies partly outside these statements. The committee can amend the text. The European Commission is consulting on minimum performance standards until 14 December 2026, and Otto’s bridge clause would tie German law to the result. Our guide to the EU consultation covers what is being asked. The Commission’s dashboard gives an EU weighted PUE of 1.27 for 773 reporting sites, with Germany supplying 58.7% of those sites (our reading of the 2025 figures). It is a useful reference point for both camps.

Some points have no advocate. No statement discusses the end of the investment-plan requirement for agreements with municipalities, the four-year ramp for new sites or the longer list of register fields.

What to plan against

For an existing German site, these are the questions to work through. The law in force is the base case, and the bill is the scenario to test against it.

1. Scope. Compare your installed IT power with 500 kW and your non-redundant connected power with 300 kW. A site can be in under one test and out under the other (p. 7).
2. PUE path. Model your annual average PUE against both sets of limits: 1.5 and 1.3 in the law in force, 1.6 and 1.4 in the bill. The dates are 1 July 2027 and 1 July 2030 in both. The test stays operational PUE, since the Design-PUE is not in the bill. A breach can carry a fine of up to €100,000, under the law in force and under the bill (p. 16 to 17). Our containment explainer shows how an air-cooled hall can move its PUE.
3. Disclosure. The annual report by 31 March stays, with new register fields: commercial register number, commissioning date, type of data centre, installed power, data traffic and the data required by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 (pp. 19 to 20). Under the new § 13(3), the Bund could publish what you submit only in aggregated, anonymised form or with your consent, and your IT customers would have to help you collect the data (p. 15). The trade-secret carve-out would narrow your own duty to publish, but only if the text survives the committee.
4. Heat. The reuse quota applies to sites started from 1 July 2026, not to existing halls. For an existing site, the cost-benefit analysis applies at planning or substantial modernisation above 1 MW nominal energy input, a term the bill does not define (p. 15). A cooling refit could trigger it.
5. Renewables. The 100% date of 1 January 2027 is the one in force. Do not plan on 2030 until an amending law is in force.
6. Customers. The bill deletes the annual customer energy statement. AlgorithmWatch argues that customers need that data for their own sustainability reporting on indirect emissions (scope 3), and that deleting § 15 removes it (p. 17).

What happens next

After the hearing, the committee prepares its recommendation and report, and the Bundestag then holds the second and third readings. The documents we checked give no date for either. The committee could change §§ 11, 13 and 16 on the way, so the final law may differ from the bill on the Design-PUE and the trade-secret sentence. The Bundesrat stage and promulgation still follow, and the bill enters into force the day after promulgation (p. 33). ScienceShot’s regulation tracker will be updated after the hearing and after each later step.