When we share pictures online, play online games, stream movies, chat with Chat GPT or pay taxes, we use server halls. Thanks to government subsidies, we in Sweden have received some of the largest of these in Europe, which are owned, among other things, by large digital companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook.
These halls have been built in Sweden because we have cheap land, cheap electricity, cool air, good power grids and telecom infrastructure that everyone can connect to. In this context, Sweden is a cheap production country for Silicon Valley. In the same way that large tech companies hire cheap labor in Asia for electronics production, they use Sweden and the other Nordic countries as cheap places to house computers required to feed the global appetite for AI and computer calculations.
Today, these server halls in Sweden have an estimated energy consumption of around 4–4.4 terawatt hours per year, but no one knows for sure because neither the power grid companies nor server hall owners report data.
At the same time advocated the construction of even more server halls to enable the state’s and international investments in AI and increased digitization. This entails higher demands on public infrastructure in small municipalities and more electricity for servers, which creates knock-on effects that risk affecting other industries, residents and the environment.
No one knows for sure because neither electricity grid companies nor server hall owners report information.
We believe that it is time to introduce rules for the sustainable development of server halls in Sweden. We must question the uncontrolled and seemingly endless demands that digitization makes on infrastructure, social and environmental resources.
The computers in the server halls require a lot of green-labeled electricity and power from the grid. As an example: Amazon in Katrineholm is today the largest electricity consumer in the municipality and has booked a quarter of the power in the electricity grid. This at a time when there is already a shortage of electricity and electricity output for other industries and the “green transition”.
When electricity and the use of the electricity grid benefits only one industry, there is simply less left for others. This leads to server halls breaking out and changing the conditions for other, domestic industries in society, which have to look elsewhere, sometimes abroad.
Photo: Anette Nantell
A clear example is the company Pågen, which had to build its industrial bakery outside Helsingborg instead of Malmö, and considered moving to Germany after Microsoft’s server hall establishment in Staffanstorp. Likewise, today there is a tangible risk that future larger industries will be denied space in Katrineholm, due to a lack of power following Amazon’s construction of a server hall in the municipality.
What we see is that the power grid is limited and that there is not an infinite amount for everyone. The problem cannot be solved by new nuclear power or more energy of other kinds. It requires a reassessment of priorities regarding how much of the country’s resources and infrastructure it is reasonable to give away to the digital industry.
Instead, politicians and planners suggest that server halls are forced to give away the heat that their large electricity consumption creates to district heating in cities. This in no way solves the aforementioned problems, but contributes to an even more unsustainable situation as server halls do not have the same commitments as other industries or energy suppliers. If the technology changes or customers move to another company, cities and communities risk being left without heat.
It is unreasonable that the training of a chatbot like Chat GPT or the use of social media should make local bread baking or, in the long term, healthcare and sustainable transport impossible.
Large digital companies such as Amazon claim that they are moving towards sustainable processes in Sweden. But it won’t be enough. Regulation is needed at the national level to limit their dominance of the electricity grid and use of other community infrastructures. We propose three measures:
1. Server halls must be regulated as a basic social infrastructure such as electricity systems, roads and telecoms. Although they take a lot of resources from society and form a basis for increasingly critical societal functions, they are not similarly regulated. This makes Sweden’s digitized infrastructure vulnerable, chaotically planned and unpredictable.
2. Principles for prioritization must be formulated and a limit should be set for how much electricity and electrical power in an area can be used by the digital industry and for what purposes. It is unreasonable that the training of a chatbot or the use of social media should make local bread baking impossible – or, in the long run, healthcare and sustainable transport in the country.
3. Require that electricity grid operators as well as server hall operators publish and report their actual and reserved electricity output, as well as electricity agreements with, among other things, wind power plants in Sweden, to enable the design of regulations and principles.
Digitization is increasingly resource-intensive and this needs attention to a greater degree than before. We question the reasons for the increasing needs for data and server halls, and the reasonableness of such large societal resources going to this end.
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