Ten EU Nations Push to Label Nuclear as Clean Power for Data Centers

Ten EU Nations Push to Label Nuclear as Clean Power for Data Centers France leads a bloc demanding the European Commission recognise nuclear in sustainability rules as AI power demand reshapes continental energy politics. France, Italy and eight other EU countries have written to the European Commission demanding that nuclear power be recognised as a clean form of energy for data centres, E&E News reported. The letter, sent to the Commission's Energy Director-General Ditte Juul Jørgensen, escalates a growing fight over how the EU defines sustainability for the booming AI sector and which power sources qualify to serve it.⁸ The stakes are commercial as much as political. Data centre power demand is growing at a pace that makes the classification question worth tens of billions of euros in investment routing. Finland's data centre power demand alone is expected to more than triple to 1.2 GW by 2030, with further growth expected as new projects advance, the Finnish Data Center Association said. Finland operates four nuclear reactors and has the continent's newest large-scale unit at Olkiluoto 3 — if nuclear does not count as sustainable under EU data centre rules, Finnish hosting loses a competitive advantage.² The scale of the demand surge extends well beyond Europe. Japan's data centres will consume as much electricity as 15 million to 18 million households by 2034, driving 60% of the country's total power demand growth, Wood Mackenzie estimates. Hyperscalers are investing $28 billion following Tokyo's selection of Oracle, Google, and Microsoft as official cloud providers. The pattern is global: data centres are becoming the single largest new source of electricity demand, and the question of which generation sources are permitted to serve them determines where capital flows.⁷ The US EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2026 projects that electricity consumed by data centre servers will increase across the commercial building stock, with standalone data centres accounting for the largest share of growth. By 2050, server consumption alone reaches levels that would have seemed implausible a decade ago.⁴ The nuclear industry is positioning to capture as much of that demand as it can. Goldman Sachs' latest Global Reactor Tracker shows the nuclear buildout continuing to gain momentum, with small modular reactors now included in the bank's coverage universe. The US government wants to quadruple nuclear capacity from roughly 100 GW in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050. Bank of America sees nuclear energy representing a $10 trillion market opportunity.^6,3 The supply chain is already tightening. Cameco produced about 17% of the world's uranium in 2024, second only to Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom at 21%, with Orano at 11%. Uranium demand is expected to climb about 28% by 2030 and more than 100% by 2040, according to the World Nuclear Association. Cameco's 49% stake in Westinghouse, which holds an $80 billion agreement with the US government to build new reactors for AI deployment, gives it exposure across the value chain from fuel to fabrication.³ The market is already repricing power infrastructure companies. Fluence Energy shares closed at $24.16 on May 8, up 98.2% in a single week after the company disclosed master supply agreements with two hyperscalers and a record $5.6 billion backlog. Capital is rotating into energy companies that can supply baseload power for AI buildouts, with nuclear and renewables offering the cleanest solutions.¹ But the EU classification fight could redirect that capital within Europe. If nuclear is excluded from sustainable data centre rules, countries like France — which generates over 70% of its electricity from nuclear — would face an absurd situation where their cleanest power source is deemed unsuitable for the continent's fastest-growing demand segment. Investment would tilt toward jurisdictions with large renewable portfolios or toward non-EU locations where the classification does not apply. Battery storage companies see an adjacent opportunity but face their own constraints. US battery storage firms report surging interest from power-hungry AI data centres, yet lengthy queues to connect to the grid and a supply chain heavily dependent on China are hampering the industry's ability to scale rapidly, Reuters reported.⁵ The ten-nation letter to the Commission forces a decision that will shape European power market investment for years. If nuclear is included, France, Finland, and other nuclear operators gain a structural advantage in attracting data centre investment. If it is excluded, the EU risks pushing hyperscaler demand toward markets with fewer restrictions on power sourcing. The Commission's response to the letter is the next signal to watch — and with it, whether European nuclear operators can capture their share of a demand wave that Goldman, Bank of America, and the hyperscalers themselves all agree is coming.