Renewable, abundant, and affordable.
Data centers are massive energy consumers, and our number one priority is to ensure power is always on. Consequently, colocation clients are always concerned about certain topics. What sort of energy do we use, and what is its carbon footprint? Do we always have a reliable supply of it? How efficiently do we use it? And of course, what is the price?
Clean hydropower
In Norway, virtually all electricity, for both industries and homes, comes from clean, renewable hydropower. This is also the case for Green Mountain’s data center power. All data centers are powered by renewable hydropower with a guarantee of origin. Hydropower in Norway has many benefits. Unlike wind or solar, hydropower can be stored and used when needed. Moreover, because of our unique natural conditions with high mountains and natural water reservoirs, it also comes with a minimal carbon footprint as well as a minimal impact on local ecosystems. In fact, many hydropower plants are built on existing lakes. So there is no need to submerge large land areas or displace people, like in other regions of the world. The official investment agency in Norway has produced an article that explains this topic in more detail. Read here.
Strong energy security
According to a EU Commission study, EU data centers will consume 3.1% of the EU’s electricity demand by 2030 to secure the modern digital society we all rely on. At the same time, the FLAP-D regions are experiencing power limitations in data centers. And the Ukraine crisis has put energy security at the top of the agenda. Undoubtedly, a secure energy supply is therefore a critical aspect when deciding where to locate your data workloads.
In contrast to many other European countries, Norway is self-sufficient in energy, and we do export some of our surplus to Europe. However, our local electricity overproduction is best used near its source to avoid transmission losses. That is why the Norwegian government welcomes energy-intensive industries to Norway. In other words, despite Europe’s unstable energy situation, Norway still has an abundant supply to meet the growing data center industry’s needs.
Power Usage Efficiency is key
PUE, or Power Usage Efficiency, is a term everyone in the data center industry knows. It is defined as the ratio of the total amount of energy used by a data center facility to the energy delivered to IT equipment. This number, of course, affects power costs, and we don’t want to waste energy for environmental reasons. We designed Green Mountain to offer world-class Power Usage Efficiency. We are on target, with an average PUE of 1.2 or lower across all our sites, well below the industry average. This is mainly due to our innovative cooling solutions and the natural, wet, and cold climate in Norway. Nevertheless, we will continue to focus on energy optimization to further reduce the number.
Affordable electricity prices
Norwegian hydropower is not only emission-free, but also very affordable. And although prices have risen in the past year, they are still very much competitive compared to the rest of Europe.
