As our society becomes increasingly digital, the demand for large data centres continues to grow. Data centres store images, power AI systems and keep the digital services we use every day operational. But they also require vast amounts of energy.
Sweden has become a favoured destination for global tech companies seeking to establish facilities that satisfy an apparently insatiable need for AI and data processing.
Critical infrastructures
At the same time, our energy systems are undergoing a historic transition towards fossil-free electricity and were not designed for the level of electrification and digitalisation now emerging. 
Thor Balkhed
Julia Velkova, professor of media and culture at Linköping University, leads the research project Megabytes vs megawatts, which examines what happens when these two critical infrastructures – data centres and energy systems – are expected to function sustainably together.
“We want to highlight the breadth of the challenges. Sustainability isn’t only about calculating carbon emissions. It’s also about safeguarding access to energy for everyone; not displacing municipalities, businesses or citizens at the expense of the expansion of data centres.”
She is quick to add:
“We’re not opposed to digitalisation; it’s the form and scale that are the problem. The view of digitalisation is that it comes with no cost, that you can connect an infinite number of data centres to our existing infrastructures or build limitless amounts of ‘green’ energy without consequences. That’s not true. Digitalisation in Sweden is politically driven, but poorly planned and on too large a scale. We can’t continue like this, the situation is urgent!”
Julia Velkova argues that citizens and businesses are bearing the consequences of global digitalisation. Municipalities are becoming major suppliers of green electricity and land to tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft – while this simultaneously slows down other forms of development. 
Thor Balkhed
The discussion ultimately concerns who is actually able to access capacity in our electricity grid. For example, Amazon’s server halls in Katrineholm are currently the largest electricity consumer in the municipality. They have reserved a quarter of the grid’s capacity, despite not knowing if they will need it all. Meanwhile, others must queue for access to electricity.
Another example is the bakery Pågen in Malmö, which a few years ago was forced to relocate its planned expansion due to Microsoft’s nearby establishment.
“When a bakery has to compete with a global cloud giant for electricity, something is fundamentally wrong. Everyone says we must electrify and digitalise, but who actually gets space in the grid when one sector, the digital industry, and the major players have reserved a large share of the capacity?
“First come, first served”
The most high-profile energy conflict in the Nordic region took place in Norway, where a new data centre built for Tiktok blocked the expansion of the Nammo ammunition factory, which wanted to increase production linked to the war in Ukraine
"It’s ‘first come, first served’. Societal benefit doesn’t matter. When the grid is full, it’s full,” says Julia Velkova.
In practice, data centres often win the race, as they are planned industrially and quickly, while their lifespan is uncertain. At the same time, closures and decommissioning are not uncommon.
Julia Velkova warns that we risk living longer with the ruins of today’s digital expansion than with the actual benefits of these projects.
“It all happens so fast that no one has time to ask: What are we sacrificing? Who is paying the price? We must ask ourselves: should electricity in Sweden go to hospitals or to generating AI images in the future?
What needs to be done?
But what needs to be done to ensure that these risks do not become reality? Julia Velkova calls for three measures:
- Transparency – Citizens need to know where their electricity is going. Energy agreements and infrastructure usage contracts held by data centre operators should be covered by the principle of public access to official documents.
- Prioritisation – Policymakers must dare to say that certain activities take precedence over others. There is a limit to how many data centres for AI and cloud services we can build before they begin to crowd out or put pressure on other parts of society.
- Planning – Digital infrastructure must be treated as what it is: socially critical, electricity-intensive and location-dependent – not simply as buildings, as is currently the case.
At the same time, she is convinced that the industry wants to improve – and that education is fundamental.
“Many companies focus only on themselves and their own backyard, and then you don’t see how you affect society. It’s a very narrow understanding of what is actually best. These are issues the industry needs to be educated about, and this is something we are preparing to work on more actively.”
