Norway intends to crack down on mining data centers that are now considered “undesirable”

Norway’s economy relies mainly on fossil fuels and fish exports. According to Datacenter Dynamics, the data center market is also growing in the country, although its share is small compared to natural and biological resources. However, the authorities intend to be the first in Europe to prepare a special legal framework requiring a detailed description of the workloads of data centers operating in the country. The country still intends to become a “fantastic playground” for data centers.

The new initiative is expected to prevent Norway from becoming a haven for cryptocurrency miners. However, they intend to pass the laws carefully so as not to create an additional administrative burden on conscientious operators and not to scare away investors at a time when the data center industry is on the rise. Neighboring Sweden has also begun to fight data center mining.

Image source: Vidar Nordli-Mathisen/unsplash.com

There are currently 45 data centers in Norway, 23 of which are located in Oslo and the surrounding area. The country announced its desire to become a “state of data centers” back in 2018. And although the authorities offer benefits to builders and operators, American hyperscalers have not yet built a single data center here. However, Google has already begun to build its campus, but Microsoft made do with two cloud regions based on other people’s data centers (now one). AWS also has an Edge location in Oslo. But other players are interested – in November TikTok will have the Green Mountain data center at its disposal, although the construction process itself is not without problems.

Thanks to its cool climate, Norway is considered a promising region for data center operators, and the abundance of “clean” energy will only contribute to business development. At the same time, the country’s authorities intend to attract only data centers that they consider useful for society and the economy, “closing the door to projects that are not needed.” To do this, you will need to know what data centers there are and what they do.

It is proposed to create a register that will contain a detailed description of the owners and managers of data centers, as well as the type of services they offer. Based on the register, local authorities will be able to make more informed decisions about the feasibility of a particular project. In particular, they intend to block the road to cryptominers, which require a lot of energy and are responsible for large volumes of greenhouse gas emissions. They were officially recognized as “undesirable.”

Image Source: Green Mountain

The authorities are consulting with representatives of the data center industry. Including the Norwegian Datacenter Industry association, which includes 60 operators and related organizations. The association itself says that it is “pretty calm” about the possibility of further regulation, since fiber optic lines, mobile infrastructure and digital service providers have been regulated for decades, while virtually no one controls the activities of data centers.

The bill is likely to be considered at the end of this year, but authorities admit that small data center operators are unlikely to be delighted. The exact number of mining data centers in the country is unknown, but it is believed that there are quite a lot of them. At the same time, such data centers do not bring any benefit to society, the authorities believe – often it is just a container standing on the outskirts, “converting kilowatts into bitcoins.” And some operators directly prohibit mining at their facilities at the level of contracts with clients.

In any case, some operators advocate minimizing the burden on business and reducing the level of bureaucracy so as not to scare away investors – already many data centers and related businesses are actually owned by foreign beneficiaries. If the bill passes, data center operators will face regular inspections, although authorities intend to make the process “as smooth as possible.” However, as industry experts note, the instinctive reaction of any data center operators to increased regulation is always negative.