Google announced today a new partnership with energy provider Haminan Energia to recover heat from its data center in Hamina, Finland, and to provide it to the local heating network.
Data centers globally are responsible a growing share of climate impact, already reaching up to 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, nearly equivalent to that of the airline industry, as demand for data center resources continues to increase rapidly.
Launched in 2011, Google’s Hamina data center uses seawater as a solution to cool the servers, and subsequently instituted a heat recovery initiative to heat its onsite offices and buildings.
Under the new initiative, Google will provide the heat free of charge to offtake partner Haminan Energia. According to Haminan Energia, the project is anticipated to represent 80% of the local district heating network’s annual heat demand.
Kalevi Mattila, COO at Haminan Energia, said:
“This new cooperation with Google would ensure even more affordable and sustainable heat for the customers in Haminan Energia district heating network.”
The new partnership marks Google’s first offsite heat recovery project, and the company said that it is working to share recovered heat offsite at as many of its data centers as possible.
Jukka Vainonen, Site Operations Manager at Google, said:
“Hamina is only the start. Heat recovery is a major opportunity for energy conservation and transition, and Google is working to make it a reality in our data centers worldwide.”
Google parent Alphabet announced a 24/7 CFE ambition in 2020, aiming to run its entire business on carbon-free energy by 2030, matching electricity demand with CFE supply every hour of every day, in every region where the company operates. According to Google, the Hamina data center currently operates with carbon-free energy at 97%.