Waste heat from data centers: what are the obligations following the DDADUE law?

The DDADUE law provides that any operator of a data center with an installed capacity of ≥ 500 kW must complete a transparency declaration no later than May 15 of each year, for the data of the previous calendar year.

The operator must first submit an administrative declaration to the Minister for Energy indicating:

• The SIRET number
• The installed capacity of the data center
• The name and email address of the person in charge to be contacted

For new data centers, this declaration must be made within two months of their commissioning.

In addition to the administrative declaration, data center operators must submit the following information:

• Administrative data of the data center: identification, location, operator name...
• Data specific to the operation of the data center: floor area, type of use, commissioning date...
• Energy and sustainability indicators: total energy consumption, share of renewable energy used, PUE, water consumption for cooling, share of waste heat recovered...
• IT capacity indicators: installed IT power, total computing capacity, number of racks installed, server utilization rate...
• Indicators on processed data traffic.

Data verification and correction procedures have not yet been defined.

Compliance and audits: complete documentation of configurations, operations, and changes, facilitating compliance with regulations and audits.

The data must be submitted to the European digital platform set up by the European Commission. It must also be made available to the public in an open and structured format that allows downloading and use by third parties, on a dedicated website, the address of which must be communicated to ADEME for inclusion in a national digital register.

The online publication must explicitly state whether:

• The data has been certified or audited by a third party;
• The data center implements an energy management system (such as ISO 50001);
• The data center adheres to the European Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency.

In the event of non-compliance, the Minister for Energy may issue a formal notice to the operator to comply within a maximum period of one year (which may be made public). At the end of this period, an administrative fine of up to €50,000 per data center may be imposed.

For facilities with a capacity greater than 1 MW (at SIRET level), the legislator now requires data center operators to recover the waste heat produced for external private or public facilities (connection to district heating networks, heating of adjacent buildings, etc.). This obligation is in addition to the transparency declaration.

The criterion used to measure waste heat reuse is the Energy Reuse Factor (ERF) indicator, which is calculated by dividing the amount of energy reused (kWh) by the total amount of energy consumed (kWh). Under current regulations, this factor must be equal to or greater than 0.2 (20% of waste heat reused). This threshold may be gradually increased to 0.4 by simple ministerial orders, depending on technological developments in the coming years.

For new projects or major upgrades of data centers ≥ 1 MW, operators must carry out an analysis to evaluate recovery opportunities and their technical and economic feasibility.

This analysis must be submitted to the department in charge of processing building permits at the town hall and/or included in environmental authorization requests made to the competent authority (DRIEAT/DREAL) as well as to the regional prefect.

An exemption may be granted if recovery is not technically feasible or economically viable. For example, if the data center is too far away, geographically speaking, from sites that can use the waste heat. In this case, the cost-benefit analysis must demonstrate this.

The same sanctions as for the obligation to complete an annual transparency declaration apply: formal notice followed by a fine of up to €50,000 per data center.