The heat reuse project by Green Mountain has been launched in partnership with Hima Seafood to supply waste heat to a trout farm in Rjukan, Norway. As a joint industrial collaboration, the project combines sustainable data centre operations with land-based trout farming.
Hima Seafood will use excess heat from Green Mountain’s data centre, DC2-Telemark, to warm the water in its aquaculture systems. After use, the cooled water can be returned to Green Mountain and integrated into its cooling process.
Known as a closed-loop energy system, the project will ultimately work to reduce energy consumption and environmental impact for both companies. It also offers a practical example of how the data centre industry can apply circular economy principles to benefit themselves and others close to where they operate.
“The collaboration between Green Mountain and Hima Seafood demonstrates how data centre and aquaculture industries can create tangible circular‑economy benefits, reduce their climate footprint and drive new value creation in rural regions – with Rjukan as an international showcase,” said Torkild Follaug, sustainability director at Green Mountain.
Construction and installation work has already been completed, with the system going operational in Autumn 2025. In its current phase, the heat reuse system is being tested with a capacity of up to 1.75MW, as both companies conduct a feasibility study to build operating experience.
Insights from this first phase will guide phase two, as the companies will look to scale the system to 8MW.
“Waste heat is only waste heat if it goes to waste,” commented Annar Bøhn, CEO of Hima Seafood. “By utilising excess heat from Green Mountain, we reduce our energy consumption, minimise our environmental footprint and strengthen the robustness of our operations.
“This is a clear win‑win solution.”
Karianne Tung, minister of digitalisation and public governance in Norway, added: “Norway relies on a secure and robust digital infrastructure and data centres are a critical part of that foundation. That is why the government wants data centres located in Norway, but we also expect the industry to contribute to a greener future.
“Here in Rjukan, we see a strong collaboration between Green Mountain and Hima Seafood. This is a perfect symbiosis between data centres and new industry and exactly the kind of partnership we want to see in more data centres.”
Green Mountain has implemented heat reuse as a central aspect of several of its data centre builds. Currently under development, the company’s site in Mainz, Germany is being designed to transfer waste heat into the city’s district heating network and could potentially power up to 20,000 households.
Heat reuse has been a subject of much interest, given the potential of the data centre industry to channel excess heat emitted into beneficial use. Already, companies like Equinix heated the Paris Olympic Aquatic Centre in Saint-Denis with its excess data centre heat.
Other data centre companies are also looking to implement these systems, with atNorth partnering with Wa3rm to recycle excess data centre heat and repurpose it for sustainable large-scale greenhouse vegetable production.
Plans are also being put in place to harness excess heat from the company’s DEN01 data centre, channelling it into Danish homes for excess heating.
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