It is no secret that Norway is an ideal place to house a data center. Ample renewable energy and a naturally cold climate enable data centers in the nation to run at the highest level of sustainability.

Founded in 2009 and acquired by Israeli real estate firm Azrieli Group in 2021, Green Mountain has traditionally focused on the Norwegian market. But in 2023 Green Mountain began to sprawl out into wider Europe and, according to CEO Svein Hagaseth, is in the process of developing a sustainability-focused “pan-European platform.”

“I ended up at Green Mountain a little bit by coincidence,” Hagaseth tells DCD when talking about his career thus far with the data center company. “A couple of years after moving to Canada, I read an article by the then CEO of Green Mountain in which he announced that the company was going international, so I did what sales guys do - I picked up the phone.

"I called him, and said: ‘What do you mean by international?’ And here I am eight years later.”

Hagaseth started at Green Mountain as senior vice president of North America, taking over as chief sales officer in 2017, and was asked to step up to CEO in 2023. With a new CEO often comes a new company strategy, but that wasn’t the case in Hagaseth’s takeover - his priority was to stay the course - because the course was working.

“I think Norway and Green Mountain have a fantastic value proposition to the market,” he explains. “So really, I wanted to do more of the same, but to accelerate the pace. I wanted to make sure that I took care of what made Green Mountain great, and to find opportunities to continue to build that pan-European platform.” And pan-European the company has become.

Green Mountain made its first steps internationally in 2022 when parent company Azrieli Group acquired Infinity SDC Ltd, taking over a data center in Romford, East London. Expansion work on that data center began in December 2023.

According to Hagaseth, that move was relatively simple in terms of entering a new country.

“We took over an existing organization that was already delivering high-quality services so we didn't have to do as much there. We just had to reaccelerate the project, invest in new capacity, and build it according to our standard design,” says Hagaseth.

Sadly, the UK doesn’t have the same proportion of green energy in its grid as Norway, but Green Mountain will still offset the data center’s power consumption with renewables, use HVO instead of diesel for its generators, and is aiming for a PUE of 1.2.

While the UK was a simpler transition abroad, Green Mountain is also currently working on a data center project in Germany through a joint venture (JV) with power company KMW.

The decision to pursue this via a JV was tactical as, in this case, the data center project is being built from the ground up. “KMW know the market," Hagaseth says. "Not the data center market, but they know the regulators and [KMW] is owned by the municipality, which gave us a good edge in knowing how to maneuver in a new country.”

The project itself appealed to Hagaseth because it was the first opportunity to “deliver as close to a truly carbon neutral data center in the German market.”

Located in Mainz, the data center is set to be cooled by the Rhine River for 10 out of 12 months of the year, will be fed energy via renewables that are already in production by KMW, and won't use diesel generators.

Eventually, the site will also be connected to Mainz’s district heating system, reusing excess heat generated by the data center. These two sites encompass Green Mountain’s current plans for international expansion, although more will eventually follow.

However, Hagaseth was keen to note the company hasn’t forgotten its Norwegian roots. Green Mountain has three data centers in Norway, two of which are fully colocation, with the other part colo and part-leased to an “international business” which Hagaseth politely declines to name.

The company has plans to develop several more. Perhaps the most high-profile is the data center currently under construction for TikTok. OSL2-Hamar will eventually comprise five buildings, each with 30MW of data center capacity.

The first of these was handed over to TikTok late last year, but Azrieli Group’s most recent annual report suggests that the overall TikTok development had fallen behind schedule.

“We’ve had the handover of the facility [to TikTok] back in November which was within the timeline, and then we are fitting it out as the clients deploy hardware into the facility. We were a little delayed because it took time to get a concession for the power,” Hagaseth tells us.

The project needed a new substation, which requires approval from the Norwegian authorities before it comes online. “It took a little longer than expected,” he says.

The delay in getting approvals caused greater problems. “That meant that winter then came around which can reach below -20°C (-4°F), and electrical cables can't be put in the ground when it is less than -15°C (5°F).

“This year, we had six weeks consecutively -20°C or below. The ground is frozen solid, and you can’t bend the cables - even if you heat them - whenever you bend them, it will break. You can’t work in those temperatures.”

TikTok is itself something of a controversial customer. Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, several countries have banned the app including Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Senegal, Somalia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, while others, including the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Malta, the Netherlands, Latvia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and Taiwan have enforced partial bans prohibiting access on work devices by lawmakers, civil servants and other employees citing data privacy and national security concerns.

In the US, a law has been passed that could force ByteDance to sell its regional operations to a local company or face a full ban. Oracle was previously touted as a potential buyer, as was Microsoft.

In an attempt to alleviate some of these data privacy concerns for EU countries, TikTok launched “Project Clover,” a plan to keep all European user data on the continent. It is developing data centers in Ireland, and has undertaken the massive project with Green Mountain in Norway.

Hagaseth is, outwardly at least, unconcerned by TikTok’s travails. “Of course, if there's a boycott of TikTok in general, that would have a consequence,” he concedes. “But, at the same time, as long as they have users on the platform, the data centers are going to be the last thing they actually shut down. But we don't see that as a considerable risk. I think there are many things that TikTok can do before that becomes a reality.”

As for Green Mountain’s future, the company is banking on the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and the opportunity it brings for Norway.

“With everything that's happening on the AI side, there's a huge requirement for capacity,” Hagaseth says. “Norway is becoming a very, very hot place to put data centers. “We have planned going forward that we have significant capacity available in Norway, and now we're looking to execute on those opportunities. I think AI has probably accelerated that discussion.”

But, as much as looking to the future is important, Green Mountain doesn’t want to risk growing faster than it can handle.

“When we do things we want to make sure that we do things with quality. We’ve had 100 percent uptime since we started, knock on wood. That is the overall objective, that we don't lose focus and bite off more than we can chew.”