“With regard to the data centre’s electricity consumption, can the Minister provide information [as to whether] the operator will have a 24/7 electricity supply contract with a national supplier to ensure that this consumption is covered 100% by renewable energy? If so, what percentage of the data centre’s projected electricity consumption will be covered by new renewable energy installations (solar and wind) financed by Google? Are there already concrete locations for these new installations?”

Once again, déi Greng MP Joëlle Welfring, is concerned about Google’s electricity consumption for its future data centre in Bissen. And once again, the probability that “Mr Minister” will first reply that he does not have to answer for the company on its electricity supply contract and that the public enquiry is underway to clarify a number of issues is close to 100%. But 100% of the electricity consumed by the future Bissen data centre will be green, with 0.3% produced by solar panels installed on the roof, say the 300-page public enquiry, which is still open for another week before it closes by the end of March.

“With regard to the additional compensation due to imports of additional renewable electricity linked to the data centre, can the Minister provide an initial estimate of the additional costs generated for the State’s coffers?” asks Joëlle Welfring.

Google says it wants to align its hour-by-hour consumption with decarbonised energy sources. The company is highlighting the energy efficiency of its infrastructures, in particular through air cooling and free-chilling, as well as the recovery of waste heat. It is also announcing a 13% reduction in the carbon incorporated into construction and limited use of emergency generators. Residual emissions must be offset.

Electricity consumption by Google’s future data centre in Bissen is estimated at 947GWh per year, or around 15% of Luxembourg’s final consumption. To the MP who wonders whether green energy production facilities are being added to the scheme, let us note, to give an idea, that green energy production in Luxembourg in 2024 will reach a new record of 1.387 GWh.

Servers will account for 83% of this consumption, with the remainder mainly related to cooling.

200 industrial customers consume 55% of the electricity

The site will be connected to the public grid via two high-voltage lines (220kV) linked to the Creos substation in Roost. The project is already using around 75% of the available connection capacity, which has led to a denser version of the project being ruled out as incompatible with network capacity.

The project is part of an energy landscape where around 200 industrial customers consume more than 2GWh per year. Together, they accounted for 3,267GWh in 2024, or 54.48% of final consumption, in a country with a total production of 1,511GWh. These players benefit from electricity contracts at prices well below those of private customers, at around €95/MWh compared with €195/MWh, whereas prices were relatively similar until Russia invaded Ukraine. In two-thirds of cases, the contract is signed with an Encevo group entity, with the remainder with ArcelorMittal Energy.

On a global scale, Google’s electricity consumption increased by 27% in 2024, reaching more than 32.1 million MWh, most of which was used for data centres. Despite this increase, energy-related emissions fell by 12%, thanks in particular to the addition of 2.5GW of clean energy capacity and lower network carbon intensity.

Energy efficiency is also improving: the average PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of Google’s data centres has fallen to 1.09 in 2024, compared with a global average of 1.56. Specialised AI chips are playing a big part in this efficiency: the Ironwood chip announced for 2025 is almost 30 times more energy-efficient than the first TPU in 2018. Google is also deploying systems to shift certain computing loads to times or areas where electricity is less carbon intensive.

Nearly $4bn invested in the green technologies of the future

The company is finally highlighting its renewable energy investment strategy, with more than $3.7bn committed since 2010 to develop around 6GW of capacity. When one of these new clean power plant projects comes on stream (like the 2.5GW added to the grid in 2024), the electricity produced is not fed into an isolated Google data centre, but into the local public electricity grid. This means that the company is actually adding new decarbonised power to the grids, contributing to the energy transition and benefiting all consumers connected to the grid.

Google’s virtuous impact also lies in its role as a “pioneer” that takes the initial financial risks to bring new technologies to market, such as the first corporate agreement with start-up Fervo Energy in Nevada, a partnership extended in 2024 to a much larger commercial scale, with the world’s first agreement to buy power from future small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) developed by Kairos Power.

Of course, Google isn’t shy about explaining that its technologies help the general public to reduce their own consumption either: Nest smart thermostats have enabled users to cumulatively save more than 162 billion kWh of energy between 2011 and 2024, which is more than the total annual electricity consumption of Poland in 2023.