“Sustainable cloud” has become a marketing phrase. We think it should be a measurable technical property: what power the stack runs on, how much energy goes to anything other than compute, and what happens to the waste heat. Here’s how we approach it in Falkenberg.
The power mix is the biggest lever
The single largest factor in a data center’s climate footprint isn’t the hardware — it’s the electricity driving it. Nordic power is largely fossil-free, with hydro, nuclear and wind in the mix. Building in Sweden means every watt entering the stack carries a low carbon footprint compared with most European grids.
PUE: the energy that doesn’t become compute
Power Usage Effectiveness measures how much of total energy actually reaches the servers versus how much goes to cooling, losses and ancillary equipment. A cool Nordic climate makes free cooling possible for much of the year, lowering PUE without energy-hungry compressor cooling. Geography works for us.
The most sustainable data center is the one that wastes the least energy on everything that isn’t compute.
— from Kepler’s engineering principles
Sustainability as engineering, not certificates
Certificates have their place, but they measure intent as often as result. We prefer to talk about what can actually be measured: power mix, PUE and cooling strategy. It’s harder to market and more honest to stand behind.