Using waste heat from a new data center to cover 40% of Espoo’s district heating needs

This article series presents cases of innovations built here in Espoo that strive for a better tomorrow for all.

The production of district heat generates most of the city’s emissions. Data centers create massive amounts of heat and globally, the rise in data, digitalization, and cloud services is driving the need for more service centers with sustainable operating models. A data center combining solutions to these two challenges is being planned in Espoo. A joint project between Microsoft and Fortum, it is the world’s largest collaboration to heat homes, services, and businesses with sustainable waste heat and one of the largest individual ICT investments in Finnish history.

The waste heat from the data center will cover approximately 40 per cent of Espoo's district heating needs in the future, replacing district heat generated with coal (reducing coal emissions by approx. 400,000 tonnes yearly) – thus marking an important step in our goal to become climate neutral by 2030. Additionally, the data center will create also about 200–300 permanent jobs and approximately 2,000 construction jobs, contributing to local employment. The location is chosen to be near the district heating network to avoid the construction of large-scale power lines.