EcoDataCenter - Sweden

EcoDataCenter is a “climate-positive data center.” Its business is based on integrating renewable energy into an already existing energy system. Any heat generated in the data center is utilized and the servers can be cooled by using excess energy from the power plant.

Fast facts:

Electricity powering the data center comes solely from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and water power as well as secondary biofuels;
Production from the data centers have 96-100% lower CO2 emissions compared to natural gas or coal electricity production;
EcoDataCenter has a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of less than 1.15. Uptime Institute 2013 Data Center Industry Survey reports an average PUE of 1.65.

The problem

The ICT sector consumes about 10% of the world’s electricity. A large part of this energy is never used, but simply released as heat into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. The combined carbon dioxide emissions from data centers are expected to exceed the emissions from the entire airline industry in only five years.

The solution

EcoDataCenter is connected to the local energy system. The excess heat from servers and IT equipment warms the buildings in the city of Falun, Sweden. In the summer, excess heat from the local combined heat and power plant provides cooling to EcoDataCenter. The collaboration between the data center and the district heating and cooling system will ensure that emissions are reduced to the extent that EcoDataCenter will have a negative carbon dioxide footprint. The electricity powering the data center comes solely from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and water power as well as secondary biofuels.

Helping the planet

The collaboration between the data center and the district heating system will ensure that the emissions are reduced to the extent that EcoDataCenter will have a negative carbon dioxide footprint over the course of a year.

Helping people

Integration with the district heating and cooling system means energy is being used instead of being wasted. This lowers the costs both for the data center and for their clients.

Scaling Up

The usage and demand for IT and Telecom services is rapidly growing. The existing data centers need to be updated to be able to deliver services with higher performance. The datacenter market is rapidly growing there is a combination of commercial and environmental aspects in data center business which creates incentives to invest in and build more data centers.