Case Study: Green Mountain AS achieves zero-emissions, PUE 1.2 seawater-cooled data center with Schneider Electric

Zero emissions data center cools servers with gravity-enabled sea water distribution

Green Mountain AS, a colocation data center operator buried in a former NATO bunker on Rennesøy island, needed a zero‑emissions, low‑cost, highly reliable facility cooled by gravity‑fed seawater and powered exclusively by renewable hydropower while meeting strict uptime standards. They partnered with Schneider Electric and deployed EcoStruxure‑enabled infrastructure — including Symmetra MW UPSs, Canalis LV busway, Prisma LV distribution, SM6 transformers, MV/Citect SCADA, Uniflair technical room coolers, InfraStruxure hot‑aisle containment with in‑row coolers, and DCIM monitoring.

Schneider Electric helped design and deliver the seawater gravity cooling system and the power/cooling stack, supplying roughly 60–70% of the equipment and installing about 12,000 monitoring points. The result: Green Mountain AS achieves a PUE of 1.2 with zero CO2 emissions, earned Uptime Institute Tier III Constructed Facility certification (Q2 2015), won Datacenter Dynamics “Green Data Center of the Year” (2013), and cut cooling costs by around 30% versus traditional mechanical cooling.

Green Mountain AS

Knut Molaug

Chief Executive Officer