Microsoft to build energy efficient, heat-producing data centre in Finland
-
Loading... - Bahiti Salem
- 17 Mar 2022
- 404 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
US software company Microsoft has announced plans to build a new emission-free data centre region in southern Finland that will also have the capacity to provide district heating for Espoo, Kauniainen and the municipality of Kirkkonummi.
In a statement released on Thursday, the company said the "unique collaboration" with Finland's biggest energy company — the majority-state-owned Fortum — represents the world's largest waste heat recovery project for data centres, and one of the biggest single ICT investments in Finnish history.
Microsoft added that the investment could generate up to 11,000 new jobs and will offer cloud services to the Finnish public sector, businesses and private individuals. Customers will also have the opportunity to store their data in Finland and avail of cloud services with quicker response times.
The statement continued that Fortum will recycle waste heat from the cooling of the data centre's servers into district heating for the city of Espoo and surrounding areas. The company estimated that the emission-free heat generated by the data centres will cover about 40 percent of the needs of the roughly 250,000 district heating users in Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi.
Once the initiative is operational, a total of about 60 percent of the area's heating will be generated by environmentally-friendly waste heat, with the remaining 20 percent coming from treated wastewater. Using the waste heat from the data centres will facilitate a reduction of about 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually, the company noted.
Opportunity to create 11,000 new jobs in Finland
The data centre project has been in development for several years, and has involved Microsoft and Fortum working in cooperation with cities, municipalities, specialists and other partners.
"Four years ago, our colleagues started looking for a data centre operator who would be ready to implement climate-friendly solutions on an unprecedented scale together with us in the Espoo, Kirkkonummi and Kauniainen areas. I am glad that the search is now over," Fortum's President and CEO Markus Rauramo said. Read More...
