The Shift Project

In 2024, the digital sector accounted for around 4% of global GHG emissions and 11% of global electricity consumption. Despite efficiency gains, its energy use has been rising by around 6% per year, a trend further accelerated by generative AIs undifferentiated deployment.

According to The Shift Project, the context of the Digital Networks Act as described in the call for contributions overlooks major issues that are just as important as the need to improve the performance of the European economy or the technological transformation of digital infrastructures.

The vision presented by the Commission in its White Paper highlights what it considers to be the imperative of developing high-speed, efficient, and secure networks, which are viewed as essential pillars of competitiveness across all sectors.

The role of the European legislator is to set clear and binding targets to steer industrial policies towards carbon neutrality in 2050. For most businesses, climate is not the central goal: the European regulatory framework should provide a clear and stable trajectory. In this context, the date of 2035 for the end of the sale of new thermal vehicles is an indispensable milestone.

Filed in French · English published by the European Commission

Security of energy supply particularly for oil and gas and energy dependencies have become central to the credibility of the trajectories monitored under the Governance Regulation, alongside climate targets. This is of course not new, but reinforced by the context of geopolitical tensions, low and declining domestic fossil fuel resources and volatile energy markets on which Europes economy still heavily depends..

Despite increased awareness on energy dependency issues following the 2022 Russian gas crisis, the EU remains exposed to significant energy and strategic vulnerabilities.First, the EU is almost entirely dependent on imports for its oil and gas consumption 97.7% and 98%, respectively, in 2022. This imbalance places Europe in a position of major geopolitical dependency.

[Please refer to the full position paper attached]. The CADA can reduce the EUs structural dependence on non-European digital providers. But it will strengthen European digital sovereignty only if cloud, AI and data centre infrastructure is planned within Europes energy and climate transition.