Google LLC today announced plans to expand its global infrastructure footprint with a new data center in Denmark that will cost 600 million euros, or about $685 million, to build.
The facility will join the company’s four existing European locations in Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium. Google last year also bought a plot of land in southern Denmark next to the site of a planned Apple Inc. data center.
One of the reasons major tech firms have been flocking to Scandinavia is that the region offers an abundance of renewable energy. Denmark, in particular, is a leader on this front, with the country’s energy agency estimating that wind turbines account for a full third of electricity production. Google indicated that it will look to use a mix of power sources for the new data center.
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“Google is committed to matching its energy use with almost the entire 100 percent carbon-free energy,” Joe Kava, the company’s vice president of global data centers, revealed the announcement in a blog post. “This commitment includes the electricity use of all our data centers, too. We are also pursuing some of the new latest investment opportunities which is called by the name as Power Purchase Agreements, or PPAs in Danish renewable energy projects like solar energy, offshore wind and onshore wind.”
The data center will be built near a town called Fredericia in the west of Denmark. It’s expected to employ 150 to 210 staffers after construction is completed in 2021, Kava wrote.
The executive also said the company will use artificial intelligence to optimize power consumption. In August, Google shared details about an internally developed AI system that can continuously adjust cooling levels inside a data center based on operational needs to reduce energy waste. According to the company, the software delivers electricity savings of about 30 percent in the facilities where it has been deployed.
Google is rapidly expanding its global data center network to support the expansion of its cloud business and consumer services. The company, like other tech giants, is also investing in new undersea internet cables to speed up network access for users.
