Data Centres In Sweden Could Get a 97 Percent Tax Break

The Swedish government has led a study that advises data centres in the country should have their tax on electricity cut by up to 97 percent.

The study follows results from research house BroadGroup that found Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden will get more than €3bn data centre investment over next three years.

2017

The proposed plans by the Swedish Ministry of Finance, which would all but totally eliminate electricity tax for data centre providers in Sweden, would come into effect in January 2017.

The study proposes 0.005 Swedish Krona (0.0004 GBP) per kilowatt hour for data centre. This is the same rate as the Swedish industrial sector benefits from.

Anne Graf, investment and development director at Sweden’s data centre hub Node Pole, said: “This is a clear signal to the market that Sweden aspires for global cloud service leadership,” according to Datacenter Dynamics.

The Node Pole, situated in the far North of the country, is being peddled as the ideal location for data centre builds.

The area touts an extremely stable electricity infrastructure, and provides natural cooling and renewable hydropower with low energy costs. It is also one of the most geologically, politically and socially stable areas in the world, according to its developers.

Even Facebook has situated its European data centre in the area, putting up with outside temperatures of -20C in the winter to help its servers keep cool under massive data demand.

“We have already seen how our offering has been quite lucrative for global actors whom seek both high service and globally competitive costs when they invest in our region,” said Graf.

“Both those actors who seek complete datacentre solutions and those who aspire colocation solutions or cloud services from providers within Sweden and indeed within The Node Pole region will gain substantially from these lowered rates.”