Denmark — The Nordics, long seen as a magnet for data center investment thanks to their stable climate and abundance of renewable energy, are now weighing limits on the growth of the power-hungry facilities as surging energy demand forces a rethink.
I can confirm that a report came out recently, that current data-center requests are 10 times bigger than our ability to expand the capacity and grid.
Denmark has 85% electricity from renewable energy, so Denmark is a very popular country to place data-centers, for companies to have a greener foot print.But the 10 times higher requests than what can be met is not as big a problem as it seems, because often data-center projects are abandoned, and only 1 in 10 are actually expected to be finished.
Problem is that use of electricity is increasing in many other areas too. Like 80+% of cars sold are electric. And heating is transitioning to electric heat pumps, that are the way superior solution to heating.
For instance our 4 closest neighbors have all switched to heat pumps within the past 2 years. 3 of which already used the 2nd most efficient source which is wood pellets.
The reason heat pumps have become so popular is that we can get heat pumps that heat water for central heating. Making it a “plug-in” replacement.Heating with a heat pump is twice as efficient as pellets, even when pellets are used to make the electricity at a 50% loss of energy. But the heat pump makes 4-5 times as much heat from that electricity, making heat pumps twice as efficient as heating directly with heat pellets. IMO that’s pretty amazing.
But all in all, a big expansion of the electric grid and capacity was already planned to keep up. But the Data-centers were not expected to increase as dramatically as they are.



