C A S E S T U D Y

implemented in 2025 and delivers annual carbon dioxide emission reductions of approximately 200 tonnes. This corresponds to almost 1 % of all emissions related to district heating. At the same time, a 1 % reduction also highlights how challenging emission reductions will be in the coming years, as they require significant actions and projects. Even so, I am confident we will achieve our sustainability targets.

What role do you see heat reuse playing in advancing circular economy principles across your operations?

We believe that Kesko – and other organisations – play a significant role in advancing circular economy practices across operations. This is particularly true in Northern Europe where significant heating energy is needed during the Winter months. By making better use of waste heat generated by other processes, such as with atNorth’ s FIN02 data centre, we can enhance energy efficiency and substantially reduce climate emissions. should be able to make more effective use of this energy to reduce the need for primary energy resources in district heating production. We hope that this project with atNorth can demonstrate how recycling excess heat can reduce environmental footprint while providing real benefits to surrounding communities.

As data centre demand grows, particularly with AI, how important are partnerships like this for ensuring increased energy use is balanced by efficiency gains?

I see partnerships like this as extremely important. Energy systems should be proactively planned wherever possible in order to optimise overall societal benefits. To me, energy efficiency also means that energy can be used for justified purposes – such as data processing in data centres – but that all energy used should always be utilised as efficiently as possible. It would make little sense to release large amounts of heating energy into the air while, at the same time, producing heating energy elsewhere by burning fuels.

In Finland, electricity generation is already almost fully carbon free, largely due to the increasing role and use of wind power. By utilising the waste heat generated from electricity use – both in data centres and in other processes – we can therefore make much better use of this renewable energy. At the same time, it is essential to ensure the stability of the electricity system, and data centres will certainly have a bigger role to play in this – and to scale responsibly as AI demand continues to accelerate.

Do you see opportunities to expand this model to other locations or deepen your collaboration with atNorth in the future?

I see no barriers to expanding this type of collaboration. In practice, the main limitation is likely related to the location of data centres. In the Mankkaa project, it was essential that the data centre was located next to the store – otherwise the investment would have become too costly.

One way to make better use of the heat produced by data centres is to feed it into the district heating network, which allows the heat to be utilised over a wider area. In Finland, the necessary infrastructure for this is already in place in most locations.

Like Kesko, atNorth is sustainably minded and committed to responsible, community-focused development, which makes partnerships like this naturally successful. �

Kesko has many years of experience with such projects – for example, last year more than a quarter of the overall heating demand of our buildings could already be covered through the utilisation of waste heat. Equally, when partnering with atNorth, we were aware of other heat reuse projects across its sites in Denmark, Iceland and Sweden which gave us the confidence to pursue this new project for sourcing waste heat.

Beyond this, there are many industries and organisations generating large amounts of waste heat and societies

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