Kenneth Glad
Every time you stream a video or ask an AI tool a question, massive server warehouses hum to life. Across the globe, towns increasingly fight these power-hungry sites. One northern country, however, has found a remarkably different approach.
In the former copper-mining town of Falun, Sweden, The Guardian toured an EcoDataCenter facility built from pre-cut wooden panels rather than steel and concrete. Cranes assembled the football-pitch-sized complex from flatpack instructions, prompting executive John Wernvik to tell the newspaper, “It looked like a very large Ikea.”
Using cross-laminated timber cuts construction emissions threefold compared with standard builds, The Guardian reports. Better yet, Swedish forests regrow that wood in 15 minutes.
Clean power keeps the 80-megawatt site running, matching the draw of 60,000 homes. Hydro plants supply 75% of its electricity and wind farms provide 25%, helping balance local rural grids.
Brief outages are unacceptable. To prevent a drop of even a few milliseconds, backup generators burn hydrotreated vegetable oil made from waste fat and cooking oil.
Heating homes next door
Inside the spotless halls, rows of Nvidia Blackwell chips generate intense heat while powering AI tools like DeepL and Mistral, The Guardian notes. About 70% of computing serves AI, alongside clients like CoreWeave.
Each rack produces the heat of 25 saunas, according to The Guardian. Closed-loop liquid pipes and water from a former drinking lake keep gear around 27 degrees Celsius without draining town supplies. Below 20 degrees, outside air cools the building alone.
Instead of wasting that warmth, the plant pipes water up to 80 degrees Celsius into Falun’s underground heating grid and dries wood pellets next door. Local officials launched the project in 2010 to fit town needs.
Local ties run deep. Around 90% of suppliers and 60% of capital spending stay local, alongside youth sports funding, The Guardian said. In Borlänge, a 240-megawatt site opening in 2027 on a closed paper mill plot will employ up to 300 people.
Trouble with tech giants
Across the Nordic region, strict rules and chilly air draw operators like Iceland-founded atNorth, which operates across five northern countries. CEO Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson told The Guardian that servers love “the crappy weather that we have.” In Varde, Denmark, its 250-megawatt hub will warm 20 hectares of winter tomato greenhouses, while a Norwegian plant heats a fish farm.
US tech giants are expanding north to serve European users too, including Meta in Luleå and Google in Horndal, where a local metal band protested its arrival, The Guardian reported.
Still, missteps are testing local goodwill. Regulators caught Google illegally felling 250,000 trees across 330 hectares in Finland, while contractors at Microsoft’s Gävle site faced accusations of housing foreign workers in poor conditions.
Meanwhile, American backlash is spreading online. Kristinsson told The Guardian, “We adopt, also, the same TikTok propaganda that is showing now in the US.”
