Digital administration: Federal data centers miss green electricity targets

Germany's state IT infrastructure faces a sustainability problem. Actually, all federal properties and thus all government server locations were supposed to be fully supplied with electricity from renewable energies by the end of 2024. However, this plan has officially failed. The federal government is leaving it open when the transition to clean energy supply for state IT systems will be completed nationwide.

This is evident from the response from the Digital Ministry to an inquiry by the Left Party in the Bundestag, which deals in detail with the climate impact and sustainability monitoring of federally owned information technology. For the survey, the government considered larger facilities with an IT connection capacity of at least 100 kilowatts (kW). Classified secret locations were excluded.

According to the information, the federal IT infrastructure operation has grown continuously in recent years. As of April, the federal government used a total of 167 data centers. In the two preceding years, the number was slightly lower at 157 facilities in 2024 and 160 in the following year. The state is responsible for the largest part of this digital infrastructure itself: As of April, 141 data centers were operated by the authorities themselves.

A look at the distribution across different departments reveals a high concentration of systems. The business area of the Federal Ministry of the Interior stands out as the leader, accounting for almost half of all non-classified large federal IT facilities with a constant 81 data centers by 2029. In other sectors, however, ongoing IT consolidation is increasingly taking effect. By 2029, the number of server locations used in individual ministries is expected to decrease significantly as tasks are increasingly bundled or transferred to central service providers such as the Federal IT Service Center.

Security concerns versus transparency

The sluggish expansion of renewables reveals a gap between political goals and administrative reality. The overarching directive to organize the federal administration to be climate-neutral by 2030 formally remains in place. However, the conversion of data centers is proving to be slow. The government acknowledges the need for action but offers no perspective for replacing fossil energy sources for its IT infrastructure.

Independent verification of progress is made more difficult by the fact that the government does not publish concrete data on the total energy consumption of individual facilities in 2024 and 2025 for reasons of IT security and secrecy. According to those responsible, a detailed breakdown of consumption values could allow conclusions to be drawn about critical state infrastructures and significantly increase the risk of IT espionage or targeted attacks by foreign intelligence services.

The national data center register, anchored in the Energy Efficiency Act, which is intended to provide more transparency regarding energy and resource consumption in the entire German server market, is still awaiting full implementation. The corresponding publication portal for the public does not yet exist. However, it is expected to go online in the near future. The path to get there is still long, given the response so far: by December, only seven of the federal data centers considered had participated in the register with their specific data.

Lack of data flow

Four of these facilities stated that they had submitted the report due to a legal obligation for facilities with a nominal power of more than 300 kW. For the remaining three locations, the Digital Ministry had no precise information about the reasons.

The government is currently not planning an internal obligation for all state data centers to participate in the energy efficiency register beyond the legal minimum requirements. As electricity demand increases due to advancing digitalization and the rapid adoption of AI applications, the sustainable and resource-efficient operation of state IT systems remains one of the unresolved challenges in climate protection.

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