Op-ed published in Dagens Byggeri on March 10. Written by: Ammar Al-Temimi, CEO, ABC Consulting Engineers

Recently, Denmark’s enormous potential in data center construction has received significant attention in the domestic media. And with good reason. As one of the world’s most digitized societies, with a stable political framework, a highly educated workforce, and a high proportion of electricity from green sources, we have a strong hand that makes Denmark an attractive partner for the booming data center industry. All of these factors, combined with our extensive experience in high-tech construction, have the potential to attract new data center investments in the billions.

We’ve already seen how massive data centers from Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta have served as a catalyst for GDP growth, job creation, and the development of technical expertise in the construction and utilities sectors over the past five to ten years. But we’re also seeing significant growth in smaller colocation data centers, which are moving into, among other places, old industrial buildings across the country. And like many others, I fully recognize the billion-dollar potential that the growth in data center construction holds for our country.

Who should get the green power?

However, it’s important that we don’t let ourselves be blinded by the prospect of billion-level investments alone. Because along with the potential come significant challenges and clear dilemmas that we need to bring to light. First and foremost, the energy demand from both existing data centers and the rapidly growing need for new ones is enormous. The AI wave will only accelerate this trend in the coming years.

In a 2025 analysis, the International Energy Agency points out that global energy demand from data centers will double between 2022 and this year. From 460 terawatt-hours in 2022 to approximately 1,000 in 2026—that’s roughly three times Denmark’s annual energy consumption. The mere fact that a single query in ChatGPT consumes up to ten times more electricity than a traditional Google search speaks volumes.

This presents Denmark with an obvious dilemma. Amid the ongoing electrification of our society to reduce the climate impact of our households, businesses, and mobility, a new and enormous energy-consuming source is emerging: data centers. Driven by our digital behavior and the digital world, this is putting immense pressure on the electricity grid right now. So should our growing green energy capacity be channeled toward data centers and AI workloads—which, in the long term, could play a significant role in finding solutions to climate challenges? Or should that electricity be prioritized for hospitals, businesses, and Danish homes?

Right now, we’re already seeing that the lack of expansion of our power grid and capacity risks creating bottlenecks in the energy transition. This includes a current moratorium on new industrial grid connections at Energinet, which will certainly also be a stumbling block for data center development in Denmark. These are capacity issues we need to resolve—preferably with green electricity.

Both because more green energy is—and must be—an important societal priority, but also because it is one of the keys to attracting data center construction amid fierce competition with our neighbors in Norway and Finland, who are already making a concerted effort to attract the data center industry—with what appears to be an abundance of energy capacity.

Mountains of e-waste and enormous amounts of water

The challenges accompanying the data center boom extend beyond electricity capacity. Cooling these large server installations also increases the local demand for water at each data center—and this water demand comes on top of the already high water consumption involved in the production of advanced microchips, which are the key component of data centers.

At the same time, the relatively short lifespan of the hardware in data centers leads to increasing amounts of e-waste. And as our digital consumption and AI only drive up the need for new data centers, we face a global challenge regarding end-of-life hardware. This is an issue that the organization Global E-waste Monitor, among others, has addressed. And it is an important nuance that we here in Denmark must take into account in the discussion about the growth potential of data centers.

If we are to create a strong data center ecosystem in Denmark, it must not be driven solely by economic gain. We must also develop comprehensive solutions to address the environmental and resource challenges that so clearly accompany this growth—including, among other things, circular solutions for electronic waste.

In short, in Denmark, we must reap the benefits of the data center boom without turning a blind eye to the accompanying dilemmas and challenges. On the one hand, it is important that, in our dialogue with the data center industry, we push for greater transparency regarding energy and water consumption, as well as the lifecycle impacts of data center construction.

Transparency and collaboration are the way forward

Until now, a detailed, comprehensive overview of the real and long-term “costs” has often been missing from the basis for decision-making. This makes it difficult both to optimize a data center construction project through innovative thinking and to view the data center within a broader context in relation to the utility infrastructure in a given area.

For the data center industry, those of us in the construction sector, and the policymakers who are crucial to realizing the potential of data centers in Denmark, all of this means—to put it simply—that we need to pull together. Efforts to attract new, large-scale investments to the country must be coordinated.

This applies both to the enormous demand for electricity—preferably from green sources—and to the necessary expansion of the power grid. But it also applies to setting high standards for environmental data requirements from suppliers, establishing uniform processes for project and construction planning, creating local recycling solutions for e-waste and cooling water, and utilizing excess heat. In several cases, a lack of a holistic approach has prevented the possibility of utilizing excess heat from data centers for district heating from being incorporated into the construction project from the very beginning.

The bottom line is that we need to think much more holistically when it comes to data center construction. This means thinking across industry silos and across public and private stakeholders if we are to stand strong in the competition to attract many more of the thousands of data centers—both large and small—that will be built in the coming years. Denmark can and should be a key player in the data center boom. But we’ll only achieve that if we combine a joint, proactive effort in this area with demands for sustainability and transparency.