Since 2 August 2025, providers placing general-purpose AI models on the market have had to comply with the obligations of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the AI Act (European Commission). These include drawing up technical documentation which, under Annex XI, Section 1, point 2(e), comprises the “known or estimated energy consumption of the model” (AI Act Service Desk). The data therefore exist, but the Regulation does not provide for them to reach the undertaking that purchases a service built on that model, and the code of practice published by the Commission on 10 July 2025 intends them for the authorities only. For procurement departments and in-house legal teams, the question is how to obtain, by contract, information that the law requires to be produced but does not require to circulate along the supply chain.
The scope of the obligation: documentation for the authorities, information for downstream providers
Article 53(1) distinguishes two flows. Point (a) requires providers to draw up and keep up to date the technical documentation of the model, containing at a minimum the information set out in Annex XI, “for the purpose of providing it, upon request, to the AI Office and the national competent authorities”. Point (b), by contrast, concerns the information to be made available to providers of AI systems who intend to integrate the model into their own systems, with the minimum content set out in Annex XII (AI Act Service Desk). Annex XII lists a description of the model, the technical means for its integration, the formats of input and output data, and training data; energy consumption does not appear (AI Act Service Desk). Nor does Section 2 of Annex XI, reserved for models with systemic risk, add anything on this point: it concerns evaluation strategies, adversarial testing and system architecture (AI Act Service Desk).
A clear conclusion follows. The obligation to document energy consumption lies with the provider of the model, not with the purchasing undertaking. The latter, if it uses a service based on the model, is as a rule a deployer and is not the recipient of any information under Article 53; if it integrates the model into its own system, it becomes a downstream provider and is entitled only to the information set out in Annex XII. In neither case does the AI Act grant it a right to know the energy data.
The picture may change. Article 53(5) empowers the Commission to adopt delegated acts detailing measurement and calculation methodologies relating to Annex XI, point 2(d) and (e), “with a view to allowing for comparable and verifiable documentation”; paragraph 6 enables it to amend Annexes XI and XII in the light of technological developments. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, amended neither Article 53 nor the two Annexes; it did, however, rewrite Article 56(6), on the Commission’s assessment of codes of practice (EUR-Lex).
The documentation form of the code of practice: data reserved for the authorities
The Transparency Chapter of the code of practice offers signatories a form, the Model Documentation Form, which indicates for each item whether the information is intended for the AI Office, for national competent authorities or for downstream providers. The Commission and the AI Board have confirmed that the code is an adequate voluntary tool for demonstrating compliance with providers’ obligations (European Commission). The section on energy consumption, covering training and inference, asks for the amount of energy used for training, measured or estimated, reported in megawatt hours with at least two significant figures, and for a description of the methodology followed in the absence of the delegated act provided for in Article 53(5). Where critical information from a compute or hardware provider is lacking, the signatory may declare the figure unavailable, specifying what information it lacks. For inference the form does not ask for an energy value, but for the benchmarked amount of computation on a reference task (benchmark), reported in floating point operations (European Commission).
All these items are marked for the AI Office and the national authorities, not for downstream providers, and information intended for the authorities is provided only upon request. The code makes the energy data available to the authorities, but does not put them into circulation along the supply chain. The Chapter provides two openings. Downstream providers may request additional information insofar as it is necessary to enable them to have a good understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the model and to comply with their own obligations, and the signatory responds within a reasonable timeframe, and no later than 14 days, save for exceptional circumstances; signatories are also encouraged to consider whether the documented information can be disclosed, in whole or in part, to the public (European Commission). In our view the first channel is unlikely to cover the energy data, which are not needed to understand the capabilities and limitations of the model; the second depends on a choice made by the provider. On the relationship between the code and the obligations of Chapter V, we refer to our analysis of the code of practice for GPAI models.
What to ask for in supply contracts
In the absence of a legal entitlement, the supply contract is the instrument through which the purchasing undertaking can obtain the energy data. The indications that follow are our own assessment, built on the categories of the official documentation.
The first clause concerns the nature of the data. Since Annex XI accepts estimation based on computational resources, it is advisable to require the provider to declare whether the value communicated is measured or estimated and, in the latter case, on which quantities it is based. The second concerns the methodology: a signatory of the code has already described its method in the form, and the clause may require it to be shared and aligned with any future delegated act. The third concerns the perimeter. The value in the form refers to training, whereas the undertaking using the service is mainly interested in use: the contract may provide for a value per unit of use, specifying whether it covers computation only or the data centre infrastructure as well, and in which data centres the service is delivered. The fourth concerns updates: the code commits signatories to update the documentation, including in relation to updated versions of the model, and to keep previous versions for ten years after placing on the market (European Commission), and the contract may provide for updated data to be communicated at each change of version. Finally, the provider may ask for a confidentiality agreement, which should be made compatible with the use of the data in the undertaking’s reporting.
The link with sustainability reporting
Directive (EU) 2022/2464 on corporate sustainability reporting, the CSRD, operates through reporting standards adopted by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772. Its scope and timing have been revised twice. Directive (EU) 2025/794 postponed by two years the obligations of the second and third waves of undertakings, moving them to financial years beginning on 1 January 2027 and 1 January 2028 (EUR-Lex). Directive (EU) 2026/470 of 24 February 2026 restricted the obligation to undertakings with more than 1,000 employees on average and a net turnover exceeding EUR 450 million, and its reporting provisions must be transposed by 19 March 2027 (EUR-Lex).
Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1563 of 3 July 2026 then replaced the Annexes to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772, which contain the standards, with a simplified version applying to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027. In the new ESRS E1, on climate change, Disclosure Requirement E1-7 requires the undertaking to disclose “its total energy consumption in megawatt hours (MWh) related to its own operations”, while E1-8 concerns gross scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions, the latter for each significant category, with reference also to the upstream and downstream value chain (EUR-Lex).
The distinction has practical consequences, which we flag as our own assessment. If the model runs in the provider’s data centres, its consumption does not fall within the energy of the purchasing undertaking’s own operations, whereas it does if the undertaking runs it on its own infrastructure. In the first case the data may be relevant, if significant, for scope 3 emissions in the upstream value chain, and the reporting undertaking will be able to obtain them only from the provider: a further reason to regulate them in the contract.
Critical aspects: estimated data, not comparable, that do not measure use
The first aspect concerns comparability. Until the Commission adopts the delegated act provided for in Article 53(5), each provider chooses its own method, and the value may be an estimate derived from computational resources. The legislator provided for that act precisely so that the documentation would be comparable and verifiable: two values declared today by different providers are not necessarily comparable with each other. Anyone using them to compare competing offers should first verify their method and perimeter.
The second aspect concerns use. The value in the form measures the energy spent on training the model, a cost incurred upstream; for inference the form asks only for a measure of computation on a reference task. The consumption generated by the undertaking depends on its volumes, on the tasks it assigns and on the infrastructure delivering the service. Inference consumption arises on the user’s side, and no provider documentation already contains it. At installation level there are reporting obligations for data centres, which we examined when discussing the energy bill of artificial intelligence; at the level of the individual contract, the data must be built.
The third aspect concerns the supply chain. The form accepts that the provider of the model may not have the data of its own compute provider; the same difficulty recurs when the service is purchased through an intermediary, and the contract should then oblige the intermediary to obtain and pass on the data.
Conclusions
The AI Act requires the energy data of general-purpose models to be produced but intends them for the authorities: Annex XII does not include them among the information for downstream providers, the form of the code of practice reserves them for the AI Office and the national authorities, and the Digital Omnibus has not altered this arrangement. The delegated act on methodologies, which would make values comparable, and any revision of the Annexes remain with the Commission. For the purchasing undertaking, it is advisable to require qualified data in the contract: measured or estimated, with method, perimeter and updates declared, and to plan now for their use in sustainability reporting, even where the reporting obligation does not yet apply to it.
Author: Valentina Grazia Sapuppo
