Accelerating its decarbonisation strategy, Volkswagen AG has set itself the ambitious goal to make its data centres net carbon-neutral by 2027. This would be three years earlier than foreseen in the European Green Deal, under which European data centre operators agreed to make their data centres climate-neutral by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To achieve this goal, Volkswagen has expanded its data centre operations at Green Mountain, a Norwegian operator of CO2-neutral data centres. All servers at Green Mountain run on 100% renewable electricity generated by hydropower and are cooled naturally by the adjacent fjord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGreen IT is a key topic on our ESG agenda. While technology is the key driver for more efficiency, an improved customer experience and new business models, IT accounts for about 3% of global CO\u2082 emissions,\u201d said Hauke Stars, Member of the Board of Management, IT and Digitalisation. \u201cGiven the rising demand for computing power and data storage to enable Volkswagen Group\u2019s NEW AUTO strategy, a sustainable IT roadmap with ambitious goals is paramount to systematically reduce our carbon footprint. With data centres being the biggest contributor of carbon emissions in IT, expanding our computing capacity at Green Mountain is a strong lever to make our data centre operations carbon-neutral by 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cooperation with Green Mountain started back in June 2019, when Volkswagen Group opened its data centre operations at Green Mountain’s RJU1-Rjukan site in Telemark, Norway. The goal was to outsource non-time-critical, high-performance computing projects like crash-test simulations to free up capacity in Volkswagen Group\u2019s data centres at the headquarters needed for critical business applications. In total, Volkswagen Group has six data centre operations worldwide, three in Wolfsburg, two in Norway and one in Singapore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Volkswagen AG\u2019s latest expansion to Green Mountain\u2019s SVG1-Rennes\u00f8y data centre, one-quarter of the group\u2019s global computing power requirements will run carbon-neutrally. This corresponds to annual CO\u2082 savings of 10,000 tons. The renewable power used for Volkswagen\u2019s data centre operation at Green Mountain would be sufficient to provide 500 households with green electricity for one year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe appreciate the renewed trust Volkswagen has placed in us and are pleased to support it on its journey towards full carbon-neutrality,\u201d said Tor Kristian Gyland, CEO of Green Mountain. \u201cTogether we share the same vision of a more sustainable future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the new site at SVG1-Rennes\u00f8y, Green Mountain converted a former high-security NATO ammunition storage facility into a unique 22,600 m\u00b2 high-security mountain hall colocation data centre. The infrastructure has been designed to be expanded up to 2 x 26MW, with Volkswagen using 3MW of capacity. For the cooling, which in traditional data centres accounts for an 40% to 80% of the electricity required to power the servers, SVG1-Rennes\u00f8y takes advantage of the adjacent deep-water fjord reaching 100m, with a constant water temperature of 8\u00b0C all year round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Norway, 98.9 % of the electricity production is renewable, with the majority generated from hydropower. Hydropower has both a minimal carbon footprint as well as marginal ecological impact. The Norwegian government vigorously promotes the utilisation of power from renewable energy sources for new branches of industry, for example, in climate-neutral data centres. Tax breaks, low energy prices and stable political conditions make Norway an ideal location for green IT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Accelerating its decarbonisation strategy, Volkswagen AG has set itself the ambitious goal to make its data centres net carbon-neutral by 2027. This would be three years earlier than foreseen in the European Green Deal, under which European data centre operators agreed to make their data centres climate-neutral by 2030. To achieve this goal, Volkswagen has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":80542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,36,93],"tags":[9907,11522,17981],"class_list":["post-80540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-centres","category-green","category-top-stories","tag-green-mountain","tag-volkswagen","tag-vw"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82262,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80540\/revisions\/82262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}