Apple said on Monday it will spend 6 billion Danish crowns (€808 million) on a new data centre in Denmark, its second in the Nordic country to run entirely on renewable energy.
Apple’s first data centre in Denmark, which was announced in conjunction with a planned data centre in Athenry, Co Galway, in 2015, is due to begin operations later this year.
However, construction has yet to begin on the Athenry facility. “The proposed data centre is currently under judicial review,” a spokeswoman said.
The High Court is due to report on the matter on July 27th.
Facebook in January also announced plans to build a data centre in Denmark, only its third outside of the United States.
Apple said the data centre would begin operations in the second quarter of 2019 in Aabenraa in southern Denmark near the German border.
Expanding
It will power Apple’s online services, including the iTunes Store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for customers across Europe.
"We're thrilled to be expanding our data centre operations in Denmark, and investing in new sources of clean power," Erik Stannow, Nordic manager for Apple, told Reuters in an email.
“The planned facility in Aabenraa, like all of our data centres, will run on 100 percent renewable energy from day one, thanks to new clean energy sources we’re adding,” he said.
Denmark, a leader in wind power, has abundant supplies of wind energy as well biomass energy.
“The reliability of the Danish grid is one of the main reasons we will operate two sites in Denmark,” Stannow said.
– (Reuters)
