Post by @fj@mastodon.social

We’ve seen a lot of examples of datacenters doing everything wrong from an environment or climate perspective

From Google illegally stripping an entire forest in Finland
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/oct/22/finland-google-felling-trees-datacentre
To Anthropic & SpaceX having commitments for hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 with dirty gas-powered turbines, causing health issues to local communities:
https://epoch.ai/data/ai-data-centers/directory

But compute is needed though for legitimate use cases.
What are some of the examples of thoughtfully designed datacenters?

the Guardian

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push

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Frédéric Jacobs

@fj@mastodon.social 58 min. ago

The Alps CSCS datacenter in Lugano 🇨🇭hosts a backup of NASA and NOAA climate data and has been working on advanced climate modeling (MeteoSwiss) as well as being a solid computing backbone for research at EPFL/ETH.

Alps uses heat exchangers to cool down using water from the alpine lake but never rejects water above 25 degrees to not hurt the fish population, and the water is oxygenated 🐟

CSCS sources 100 percent of its electricity from hydropower and is carbon neutral.

Frédéric Jacobs

@fj@mastodon.social 49 min. ago

Infomaniak is working on a 2.5 MW datacenter in Bulle, fully powered by renewable energy.

They chose this location because they wanted to make sure that the excess heat was not going to waste. The region has a network that allows to distribute the excess heat through hot water pipes to nearby buildings for hot water and heating.

Therefore the heat doesn’t go to waste and is actually used by the region to lower its carbon footprint by being able to remove fossil heating

https://www.letemps.ch/cyber/intelligence-artificielle/en-pleine-fronde-contre-les-centres-de-donnees-infomaniak-prevoit-a-bulle-son-installation-la-plus-puissante-et-la-plus-ecologique

En pleine fronde contre les centres de données, Infomaniak prévoit à Bulle son installation la plus puissante et la plus écologique - Le Temps

La société genevoise prévoit une mise en service en 2028 pour ce site de 2,5 mégawatts à Bulle, valorisant toute la chaleur produite via le réseau de chauffage à distance. Contactée, Greenpeace salue des standards exemplaires

tk 🍜

@tk@social.apreslanu.it 30 min. ago

@fj don't think it is the same but infomaniak also has a project within a housing cooperative.

https://d4project.org/

https://bistoquette.ch/

D4 Project

Home - D4 Project

Justin Scholz

@jmovs@mastodon.social 40 min. ago

@fj On the surface yes, but when I looked into this, you have to assume that the datacenter gets built anyway. Otherwise a heat pump is more efficient.

Frédéric Jacobs

@fj@mastodon.social 37 min. ago

@jmovs In Switzerland, they recommend heat pumps for smaller buildings (<50kW) but the “Chauffage à Distance” is often favored for large public and office buildings. https://www.lausanne.ch/vie-pratique/energies-et-eau/services-industriels/a-propos-sil/nos-activites/chauffage-a-distance.html

Site officiel de la Ville de Lausanne

Chauffage à distance

A l'horizon 2050, le chauffage à distance lausannois jouera un rôle essentiel dans la transition énergétique et pour atteindre les objectifs du Plan climat. Grâce à des pompes à chaleur alimentées par des énergies renouvelables, il couvrira 75% besoins en chaleur de la ville sans émettre de CO2.

Frédéric Jacobs

@fj@mastodon.social 41 min. ago

One thing I like about Scaleway, is that they show you the carbon impact of your GPU instances. They show, and remind you, of the carbon intensity of renting a Blackwell for an hour.

I’ve definitely paid extra in the past for lowering the carbon intensity of some computation I needed to run, and more importantly, improved the algorithm to be more efficient.

Frédéric Jacobs

@fj@mastodon.social 33 min. ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fj/116799690164360933

In aggregate, data center operations in Europe are significantly more climate-friendly than in other regions of the world, such as the U. S. or China.

The European average of 263 g CO2e / kWhIT contrasts with significantly higher national figures, such as in the U.S. (414 g) or in carbon-intensive markets like China (695 g) and India (900 g)

Choose wisely which algorithms to run, to make them as efficient as possible, and then run them in a datacenter with the lowest carbon intensity.