Danfoss decarbonizes by building green data centers

In response to the exponential growth of data-center energy consumption, Danfoss, one of Denmark's largest industrial groups by sales revenue, built data centers that will be an example for future climate-friendly designs. These include using technology to cool data centers in a greener way to reduce energy consumption within them and to reuse the excess heat for other applications.

"Using the latest technologies for cooling and heat recovery, we transform data centers from energy consumers to sources of sustainable energy. It is exciting to see that in action at our own data centers," said Jurgen Fischer, president of Danfoss Climate Solutions.

Its headquarters in Nordborg, Denmark will be carbon dioxide neutral in 2022, and in 2024 and reused excess heat from Danfoss data centers will provide 25 percent of the overall heat supply for the 250,000 square meters of the headquarters' factories and offices.

Danfoss is on a digital transformation journey, consolidating 20 global data centers and 135 server rooms into a handful of data centers, which will be built utilizing Danfoss green technologies.

Data centers are consuming vast amounts of energy. Energy is used to supply servers with power, but also to cool down server rooms and remove the huge amounts of heat they generate. It is estimated that 10 percent of all electricity is used within the IT ecosystem. This makes reducing the climate impact of digitalization a high priority.

"The data centers at Danfoss Headquarters will lay solid ground for our global operations to achieve decarbonized growth by 2030," said Arthur Xu, president of Danfoss China.

Xu said proactive measures are being taken in factories in China to reduce carbon emissions too, and the company is dedicated to sharing Green Data Center solutions with partners in China.

The company's two factories in Jiaxing, East China's Zhejiang province and Tianjin each were recently honored as a "green factory" by local authorities.