REYKJAVÍK, Iceland, Apr 14, 2025 – atNorth has announced its latest heat reuse partnership as part of its commitment to responsible operations. The partnership with Kesko Corporation will allow waste heat from atNorth’s FIN02 data center in Sinimäki, Espoo, to be recycled for heating the nearby Kesko store. The heat generated will meet all the heating needs of the Kesko site and support Kesko’s goal of reducing scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 50 percent, much of which comes from heating its buildings.
The arrangement will improve atNorth’s energy use and lower Kesko’s emissions from district heating. This will reduce both companies’ carbon footprints and support Finland’s circular economy.
“One of the key goals of our ambitious sustainability strategy is to reduce CO2 emissions resulting from the heating of our properties”, says Antti Kokkonen, Kesko’s director of energy. “By collaborating with atNorth in just one store, we reduce Kesko’s emissions from district heating use by 0.9 percent, saving approximately 200tCO2 equivalent per year. This corresponds to the annual consumption of about 120 district-heated detached houses – as an individual project, this is one of our most significant CO2 reduction initiatives this year.”
atNorth has signed an agreement with Caruna Espoo Oy to secure 45 MW of power for its FIN02 data center. The investment in Espoo helps Caruna upgrade and improve the area’s power infrastructure.
“Data centers play an important role in the long-term resilience of Finland’s power infrastructure and its economic growth as a whole”, says Kosti Rautiainen, EVP customers and new ventures at Caruna. “atNorth’s investment in Espoo supports the development of a carbon-free energy system through innovative heat reuse partnerships and promotes local employment opportunities. We are delighted to play our role in this data center ecosystem for the benefit of our community.”
“We are pleased to showcase beneficial collaborations that support our vision of data center ecosystems that fundamentally contribute to the communities in which we operate”, says Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO atNorth. “By collaborating with likeminded businesses, we can not only mitigate our own carbon consumption but assist others too. At the same time, supporting the investment in local power networks facilitates long term power availability that benefits the local community as a whole”.
atNorth has been investing in Finland since early 2023 when it acquired two data centers from Advania, FIN01 and FIN03, that are located metro sites within Helsinki’s digital landscape. Since then, the business has been developing two additional data centers, the FIN02 site in Sinimäki, Espoo that became operational in April, and FIN04 in Kouvola, that is expected to be operational by the end of 2025.
Source: atNorth
About atNorth
atNorth is a Nordic data center services company that offers sustainable, cost-effective, scalable colocation and high-performance computing services trusted by industry-leading organizations. The business acquired the leading high-performance computing (HPC) provider, Gompute, in 2023, enabling a compelling full stack offering tailored to AI and other critical high-performance workloads. With sustainability at its core, atNorth’s data centers run on renewable energy and support circular economy principles. All atNorth sites use innovative design, power efficiency, and smart operations to provide long-term infrastructure and flexible colocation deployments. The custom solutions help businesses calculate, simulate, train, and visualize data workloads in an efficient, cost-optimized way. atNorth is headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland, and operates seven data centers in strategic locations across the Nordics, with additional sites set to open in Helsinki, Finland, in Q1 2025, and Ballerup, Denmark, in Q2 2025. Its tenth site is under construction in Kouvola, Finland, and its eleventh site will be in Ølgod, Denmark. The business has also secured land for a future mega site in the Sollefteå Municipality in Sweden.