Daria Onitiu, Faculty Associate Sandra Wachter, and Brent Mittelstadt consider the implications of the recast Energy Efficiency Directive for the Oxford Internet Institute. The authors argue that the EU needs a new AI strategy to balance data center development and sustainability. They write: "These aggregate and individual effects are not captured in PUE and WUE metrics but point to a broader problem: data centre operators can achieve low scores while ignoring the second-order effects of scaling and retrofitting. Big tech can effectively follow its own market-incentives to expand and sustain larger AI workloads, ultimately driving further data centre expansion at the expense of local communities."