Kajaani is a world leader in green data center operations

Kajaani stands out from other Nordic data center alternatives with its production readiness and already implemented reference projects. The former paper mill area at Renforsin Ranta offers tens of thousands of square meters space for data centers. The Kainuu region is energy surplus area. The vast hydro and wind power production ensures the future availability of renewable energy and waste heat utilization in the district heating network enables negative overall CO₂ emissions for data center operations.

New data center investments in Kajaani are eligible to apply for a regional investment support from the Regional Council of Kainuu and from the City of Kajaani. For example, LUMI project has received ~ 4 M€ funding.

Finland is ranked as the safest European country for data centers and the fourth safest worldwide. Some of the general benefits of choosing Finland include the ease of starting a business, the euro currency, the stable political and social environment and the absence of natural risks. These factors, combined with Kajaani's northern location and exceptional infrastructure, create excellent conditions for data center operations.

A sustainable data center

100% renewable hydro and wind electricity, enabling CO₂ neutral data center operations. Furthermore, the implemented and tested waste heat utilization process of LUMI data center results in overall CO₂ negative data center operations.

The benefits of the area include the several brownfield buildings that are suitable for data center operations. Utilization of existing brownfield buildings reduces construction time and, compared to new construction, saves 80% of construction time CO₂ emissions.
 

Cost-effectiveness

The climate of Kajaani enables excellent energy efficiency at the data centers. In the Renforsin Ranta Business Park, enables on of the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in Europe. Cost-efficiency is secured by a private industrial electricity network, local renewable energy production and the potential for selling waste heat to the district heating network of the City of Kajaani. Selling the waste heat enables savings up to 40% on energy costs. Free cooling is available throughout the year helping to achieve very low PUE value. For example, the average PUE value in 2020 in CSC’s national data center was 1.03.

Scalability

The area offers an existing and tested operating environment for data centers which need scalability to prepare them for potential future needs. There is more than 50,000 m² of free building space suitable for data centers, and a plot of more than 200 hectares is also available for data center operations. The existing 200 MW transformer capacity ensures the availability of electricity for new centers. With regard to telecommunications services, the area is operator-neutral, and the area’s functioning global research data connections FUNET, NORDUnet and GÉANT offer speeds of up to 100Gb. The Kajaani data center ecosystem is ready to support new data center projects and operators with expertise in data center design, project planning and management, construction and maintenance as well as operations.