A partnership comprising the City of Stockholm, Fortum V?rme, Ellevio, Stokab and Invest Stockholm, has launched Stockholm Data Parks. The initiative seeks to help large data centers maximize cost efficiency and sustainability with low cost renewable electricity and paid-for heat recovery which is then distributed to Stockholm’s heating system. The long-term objective is to supply 10 percent of the city’s residential heating demand through recovered excess heat from data centers.
Stockholm Data Parks bring together the basic data center infrastructure elements to minimize startup costs and time to market for data center investors. At the ready-to-build sites, the necessary power, cooling, heat recovery and dark fiber infrastructure is predefined. The sites launched today are located in Kista/Akalla, the ICT hub of Sweden.
Over time, data parks in other locations will be added to the program. Fully built out, recovered heat from Stockholm Data Parks will play an important role in the city’s future fossil-free energy system and data centers locating in Stockholm Data Parks have the potential to become net climate positive. Setting new standards for sustainable data centers also entails reaching new cost levels. In addition to the cost of electricity decreasing to less than ˆ0.04 per kilowatt-hour because of the recent tax change for data centers, Stockholm Data Parks will offer free data center cooling as a service in exchange for the excess heat when data center load exceeds 10 MW.
“So far, most data centers have been built with little consideration for the environment. We want to change that. With the significant synergies between recovered data center heat and the city’s environmental objective to become fossil fuel-free by 2040, I am determined to make Stockholm a major hub for sustainable data centers,” says Karin Wanng?rd, Mayor of the City of Stockholm.
“With a market of more than 80 million people within a roundtrip delay of 30 milliseconds, covering all major cities of Northern Europe, the Baltic states and western Russia, Stockholm is an ideal location for cloud players and other major data center actors,” adds G?ran L?ngsved, Chariman of the Board at Fortum V?rme.
