The European Commission has proposed a common rating scheme for data centres aimed at increasing transparency on their energy use and supporting their sustainable integration into Europe’s energy system.
Data centres are considered essential to Europe’s digital future. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for data centres is projected to consume more than 3% of overall electricity grids by 2030.
This rise in demand puts pressure on electricity grids and the use of natural resources, including water. That pressure extends to the climate, with data centres contributing to increased carbon emissions.
In addition to rising demand, the EU is looking to triple its data centre capacity over the next five to seven years.
Under the proposed common rating scheme, individual data centres with a capacity above 500 kilowatts will be covered. The scheme will also ensure transparent information about the actual use of resources, including their contribution to the grid.
That contribution includes the reuse of waste heat and the addition of clean energy generation capacity.
The delegated regulation establishing the common rating scheme is now subject to a two-month scrutiny period by the European Parliament and the council before entering into force.
The European Commission expects the first sustainability labels for individual data centres to appear in 2027. By the end of 2028, the Commission plans to review the scheme’s effectiveness and identify possible improvements, if necessary.
Expanding data centre capacity
Data centres are currently one of the world’s fastest growing sectors, consuming around 68 terawatts per hour of the EU’s electricity in 2024 alone. Driven by artificial intelligence, this is expected to virtually double to 114 terawatts per hour by 2030.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), data centres require large amounts of energy and mineral resources to build, including critical minerals.
Serverboards that connect the essential electrical components of a server comprise silver, gold, copper, tin, tantalum, palladium, and platinum.
Semiconductors and microchips — the brains of data centres — contain arsenic, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, indium, palladium, platinum, silicon, and tantalum.
Heat sinks prevent servers from overheating by transferring heat away from sensitive electronics. These are made of aluminium and copper.
Meanwhile, magnets and data storage used in hard disk and solid-state drives to store and retrieve data are made up of barite, boron, and rare earths.
As Europe looks to expand its data centre capacity, securing reliable supplies of these minerals becomes another piece of the continent’s digital infrastructure challenge.
That places the mining sector further upstream in Europe’s technology ambitions, as explorers search for new deposits, developers advance resources towards production, and established producers supply the metals needed to build the next generation of digital infrastructure.
For junior explorers, in particular, the opportunity is not necessarily about finding a deposit that will directly supply a European data centre. Rather, it is about adding new sources of metals to global supply at a time when demand is expanding across multiple technology-driven industries.
Australian Critical Minerals and Tinka
Over in Peru, Australian Critical Minerals (ASX:ACM) owns the Riqueza Project, which is considered prospective for copper and silver.
The project comprises over 4km of sub-cropping intermediate sulphidation veins with previous exploration returning copper grades up to 8.7% copper and silver assays up to 2,238 grams per tonne in surface rock chip samples.
Australian Critical Minerals also owns the Cerro Rayas Project in Lima. Cerro Rayas hosts multiple historical lead-zinc-silver workings in Mississippi Valley-type carbonate replacement deposits.
Peru is extremely rich in strategic minerals. The USGS noted that in 2024, the nation ranked first for arsenic trioxide production (49% of global output); second for silver (14%) and zinc (12%); third for copper (12%), lead (6%), and tin (11%) production; and fourth for molybdenum production (15% of global output).
As previously reported, less than 1% of Peru’s land has been explored, with just above 1% of reserves under development, leaving strong potential for explorers.
Tinka Resources (TSX-V:TK) is another Peruvian explorer focused on zinc-silver-tin deposits in central Peru.
The company’s flagship Ayawilca Zinc-Silver-Tin Project is an emerging polymetallic deposit. Ayawilca comprises a large indicated resource totalling 28.3 million tonnes (Mt) @ 5.82% zinc, 16.4g/t silver, and 91g/t indium, plus an inferred resource of 31.2Mt @ 4.21% zinc and 14.5g/t silver.
“We aim to de-risk both Ayawilca and Colquipucro through permitting, drilling, and engineering studies, with a goal of being a highly successful polymetallic mining operation within the next three to five years,” CEO Graham Carman previously told this news service.
For Europe, the significance of these projects lies in the potential to diversify the geographic sources of minerals needed by modern industries. That potential is increasingly valuable as governments focus on supply chain resilience.
RareX
Australia is positioned to play a role in expanding the mineral supply chain behind the digital economy.
The country has a substantial endowment of critical and base metals. Meanwhile, its established mining industry and proximity to major Asian markets provide an existing platform for developing new supply sources.
Among the companies exploring for minerals relevant to advanced technology is RareX (ASX:REE), which is advancing its Cummins Range Project in Western Australia.
Cummins Range Project hosts a resource of 1.6Mt @ total rare earth oxides (TREO) and 24Mt of phosphate.
CEO James Durrant says the company’s initial intention with Cummins Range was to explore the scale of the carbonatite-hosted deposit. That intention reflected the potential for it to develop similarly to Lynas Rare Earths’ (ASX:LYC) Mt Weld mine, one of the world’s most valuable rare earth element (REE) deposits.
While Cummins Range is not as big as Mt Weld, the deposit has shown itself to be Australia’s largest undeveloped rare earths project by scale, hosting gallium intercepts alongside clean phosphate hosted in pure apatite.
As previously reported, Durrant says he is seeing a lot of interest in the REE space at the moment but that it can be hard to understand these projects if you are not that well versed in the industry.
“As rare earths grow in their use, in electric vehicles, robotics, advanced technologies, we see growing demand and a growth in the number of projects around,” the CEO says.
Australian Gold and Copper
But the opportunity extends beyond critical minerals and rare earths specifically associated with semiconductors.
In New South Wales, Australian Gold and Copper (ASX:AGC) is building a mineral exploration portfolio across the Central Lachlan Fold Belt, focusing on gold, silver, copper, and polymetallic systems.
The company’s Cargelligo Project in the southern Cobar Basin hosts drill-ready Cobar-style gold-polymetallic prospects. The project contains combinations of gold, silver, copper, zinc, and lead.
Australian Gold and Copper’s Achilles discovery has also highlighted the polymetallic potential of the project, which contains a resource of 10.3Mt @ 116g/t silver-equivalent for 38.5 million ounces.
In July, drilling began which Managing Director Glen Demar says targeted the ‘high-grade’ northern pod to extend mineralisation beyond the current 38.5 mineral resource.
“We are systematically delineating a previously underexplored domain within a mature mining belt,” Demar says.
Together, all of these explorers highlight a fundamental point about Europe’s data centre ambitions. Before minerals can become components in servers, chips, cooling systems, and electrical infrastructure, they first need to be discovered, developed, mined, and processed.
That makes exploration an important — and often overlooked — first step in the digital economy.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Main image: iStock
