We at Abelia completely agree with the head of Innlandet MDG Jon Lurås when he writes in an article on news Ytring that our natural resources must be used for the best for us as a society, and then we must think long-term. The debate about data centers and electricity use came when it became known that Green Mountain is building a data center in Hamar and that TikTok is one of the tenants. There are several reasons to be skeptical of TikTok, but data storage in Hamar is not one of them. Both MDG and Abelia are concerned with what is best for our children, for the local community, for Norway and for the planet. But there won’t be a green shift without digitalisation. There will be no digitization without data centres. Think about your everyday life: Do you go to the bank anymore? No, you log in to the online bank. Do you fly to meetings a day’s journey away and then fly back home? No, you log in to Teams and meet the same people without CO₂ emissions. This is what the new data center will look like. Illustration: CTS NORDICS Are you stuck with pictures that you paste into a photo album? No, the photos are in the cloud and the old-fashioned photo album is often digital. We don’t have enough power, that’s right. That is why it is important to have a debate about how our scarce community resources should be used. Data centers provide almost three times as many jobs per megawatt as power-intensive industry. What requires electricity in a data center is to cool servers. If you want to use as little energy as possible on data centers and critical systems, there is no more perfect place than cold Norway. The alternative is to place data centers in countries with a warmer climate, where electricity is produced with coal power. In addition to creating far more jobs for energy than other power-intensive industries, data centers enable further job creation in new digital industries. This makes the use of the energy twice as valuable. Data centers have low natural encroachment. They do not emit CO₂. According to NVE, a modern data center can reduce energy consumption and indirect emissions by 87 percent compared to the technology they replace. Data centers are necessary infrastructure for all forms of further development of Norwegian industry and business. Digitization makes the economy greener and all new industry in Norway needs digitization – and data centres. Data centers can also use the waste heat to build circular bio-based processes, as Lefdal Mine is doing in Nordfjord. There, hot water from the server parks will be used to keep the temperature up in land-based smolt facilities. Therefore MDG should cheer for the plans in Hamar.
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MDG should cheer for the data center in Hamar – Ytring
