Norway, Switzerland, France, Sweden and Denmark are the top five future destinations for medium and large datacenters in the EMEA region, according to research firm Canalys.
On the other end of the spectrum, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Hungary are at risk of not being able to provide enough energy to meet the demands of datacenters.
Datacenters are huge collections of servers (computers) that do most of the storage and processing on the Internet. They are a rising consumer of electricity due, both due to direct power consumption as well as in the form of cooling costs required to run the hardware in optimum condition.
Colder countries are expected to dominate the future of the datacenter business due to the lower need for cooling in such climes.
Canalys recently ranked 26 countries in EMEA based on numerous risk and cost factors such as political stability, climate, inflation, cost of electricity, government debt and per-capita GDP, electricity production/demand differentials etc..
The above northern European countries had the necessary energy foundation for medium-sized and large data centers in the coming years in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, Canalys said.
Canalys estimates that the combined base of server closets, server rooms, and small, medium-sized and large data centers accounts for 1% of all electricity consumption and 5% of commercial electricity use across EMEA.
It predicts electricity use across all these facilities will be 15% higher by 2016, driven in particular by a 40% rise in consumption by large data centers.
Companies building and utilizing data centers will seek opportunities to capitalize on lower-cost, more dependable and greener energy supply, as long as legislation regarding restrictions on data movement allows such freedom.
‘Many countries remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels, often sourced from politically unstable regions. Pressure to meet emission reduction targets, especially in Europe, will force large combustion plants to be decommissioned or retrofitted with costly carbon capture solutions,’ added Matthew Ball, Canalys Director of Enterprise Services.
