C A S E S T U D Y partnership with atNorth and how it has revolutionised business operations for the company.
What are your key strategic priorities as Director of Energy at Kesko?
Kesko operates across eight countries in Northern Europe and managing energy use is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, cost control is essential in order to succeed in highly competitive markets. Secondly, as a forerunner in corporate sustainability, Kesko aims to reduce the climate emissions caused by its operations, one significant source of which is the use of heating energy in retail buildings. In recent years, the role of emissions in energy management has become increasingly important.
How does this project with atNorth align with these priorities?
One of the Kesko stores, K-Supermarket Mankkaa in Espoo – close to Helsinki, Finland – is a historical building which is partly protected due to its architectural heritage. It is also one of the largest individual consumers of heating energy among Kesko’ s retail locations. Carrying out energy efficiency measures in a protected building has proven challenging.
However, when atNorth began developing its data centre next to the store, an opportunity emerged to reduce heating-related emissions by utilising waste heat produced by our neighbour. atNorth’ s infrastructure at the new FIN02 site was able to repurpose the excess heat generated by the data centre to supply our store with the heating required.
As the building had previously relied heavily on district heating with associated climate emissions, this cooperation has enabled a significant reduction in Kesko’ s overall emissions impact.
Can you explain how the heat reuse system works in practice and how the partnership with atNorth enables you to supply recycled heat to your nearby retail branch?
The data centre generates significant amounts of waste heat as a result of data processing. This waste heat has to be removed from the data centre using its own cooling systems. We are able to utilise this waste heat by raising its temperature to a suitable level with the help of heat pumps. The building’ s heating network was already in place and previously the heat was supplied almost entirely from the district heating network. Today, most of that district heating has been replaced by heat produced by the heat pumps through this collaboration with atNorth, demonstrating how innovative partnerships like this can result in lower-carbon operations across multiple businesses.
How does this initiative support Kesko’ s emission reduction targets and what measurable impact do you expect it to have?
In 2024, we set ambitious targets to reduce Kesko’ s own so called Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 58.8 % by 2034. These targets were also approved by the Science Based Targets initiative( SBTi) in January 2026. In 2024, nearly 30 % of these emissions were caused by the heating required for our building facilities. We aimed to cut these emissions both by shifting to lower emission heating solutions and by improving energy efficiency and the utilisation of waste heat.
We have already implemented similar waste heat projects in around 100 stores, where heat recovered from grocery store refrigeration systems has been utilised. In this specific case, the source of waste heat is different – a data centre.
The Mankkaa project was the most significant waste heat project
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