The goal of reduction of CO2 emissions of the Volkswagen Group it’s not just about its cars but also all its activities. In this regard, the German Group has made it known that it intends to pay carbon neutral operations in its data centers by 2027. This is a goal that we want to achieve 3 years earlier than the European Green Deal, with which European data center operators have committed themselves to making their data centers climate neutral by 2030.
To achieve this, the Volkswagen Group has expanded its operations at the data center of Green Mountain, in Norway. All Green Mountain servers are powered 100% with renewable hydroelectric energywhile the water from the adjacent fjord is used for natural cooling.
The partnership with Green Mountain began in June 2019, when the Volkswagen Group started operations at Green Mountain’s RJU1-Rjukan site in Telemark, Norway. With the expansion of operations at the SVG1-Rennesøy data center in Green Mountain, a quarter of the Volkswagen Group’s global computing power needs will be managed carbon-neutral. The German group makes it known that all this corresponds to a cut in CO2 emissions of 10,000 tons on an annual basis.
Volkswagen reports that Green Mountain, for its SVG1-Rennesøy site, has converted a former NATO ammunition depot into a 22,600 m2 high-security data center located inside a mountain.
For the cooling process, which in traditional data centers absorbs between 40% and 80% of the electricity needed to power the servers, SVG1- Rennesøy exploits the waters of the adjacent fjord, up to a depth of 100 meters, with a constant water temperature of 8 degrees all year round.
The collaboration between the two companies began when the Volkswagen Group decided to outsource non-urgent projects, such as crash-test simulations, to free up computing capacity of its data centers at its headquarters. In total, the Volkswagen Group operates six data centers around the world: three in Wolfsburg, two in Norway and one in Singapore. Hauke StarsMember of the Board of Directors of the Volkswagen Group, commented:
Given the growing demand for computing power and data storage to support the NEW AUTO strategy, a sustainable and ambitious IT action plan is essential to systematically reduce our carbon footprint. As data centers are the primary carbon emitters in the IT industry, expanding our compute capacity at Green Mountain is a strong lever to make our data center operations carbon neutral by 2027.
