Summary
- GreenScale has detailed sustainability commitments for its planned 300MW Tonstad Campus in southern Norway.
- The campus is planned around secured power, four purpose-built data centres, proximity to Ertsmyra switchyard, and renewable hydropower.
- The commitments include embodied carbon, renewable procurement, HVO backup fuel, WUE of 0.4 or below, heat export readiness, and ESG reporting.
GreenScale has set out the sustainability framework behind its planned 300MW Tonstad Campus in southern Norway, tying a large AI-ready data centre development to specific commitments on power, water, embodied carbon, backup fuel, heat export, procurement, and reporting.
The campus is being developed in Sirdal, in Norway’s NO2 power zone, next to the Ertsmyra switchyard and close to the Tonstad hydropower plant. GreenScale describes the site as one of Norway’s largest power-ready locations, with 300MW secured, 420,000 sq m of land acquired, first capacity targeted for 2028, and projected investment above €2.5bn.
Tonstad is planned around four purpose-built data centres designed for high-performance computing, cloud, AI, and hyperscale workloads. GreenScale lists an annual PUE target of 1.2 on its campus specification page and links the site to Norway’s low-carbon grid, hydropower resources, and free-cooling potential.
The company’s sustainability framework is built around two pillars: green infrastructure and scale for good. Its 12 commitments include reducing embodied carbon, buying renewable power, prioritising local procurement, requiring suppliers to meet sustainability standards, running backup generators under its control on certified biofuels, minimising water consumption, designing for heat reuse, achieving net zero for operations by 2040, and providing ESG data within agreed reporting deadlines.
Metrics replace slogans
Several of the commitments can be tested against facility performance rather than left as broad environmental language. GreenScale says all its sites should achieve a water usage effectiveness of 0.4 or lower within 12 months of operation. The company says it will use measures such as dry cooling, closed-loop systems, and rainwater collection to reduce water use.
That gives the Tonstad project a measurable marker in a sector where sustainability claims are increasingly judged by actual design and operation. AI and HPC workloads are raising rack densities and pushing more operators towards liquid cooling, hybrid thermal architectures, and higher heat rejection. Water use is becoming a planning and public-acceptability issue in more markets, especially where evaporative cooling, drought risk, and local resource pressure collide.
Norway offers a different starting point from water-stressed markets in southern Europe, but lower water stress does not remove the need for disciplined design. A WUE commitment gives customers, local authorities, and investors a metric to follow. It also makes the cooling strategy more visible. If the campus relies heavily on dry or closed-loop cooling, the engineering consequences move into capital cost, plant sizing, energy use, and resilience under warmer summers.
The heat reuse commitment is similarly practical. GreenScale says all new facilities will be designed with connection points and equipment that can integrate with external heat recovery systems and district heating networks. That does not guarantee heat export. The economics depend on nearby demand, network infrastructure, temperature levels, commercial arrangements, and political support. It does, however, put the physical interface into the design brief from the start.
Backup power and embodied carbon
The framework also addresses two areas that often sit behind the headline PUE figure: backup generation and embodied carbon. GreenScale says all backup generators under its control will be able to run on certified biofuels such as HVO, supported by long-term supply arrangements and procurement frameworks.
That approach may reduce local emissions compared with conventional diesel during generator operation, but it still raises questions around fuel availability, certification, lifecycle emissions, storage, testing regimes, and cost. As AI campuses scale, emergency generation becomes a larger physical and environmental presence. Procurement, testing, permitting, and reporting for standby power will attract closer attention as individual campuses move into the hundreds of megawatts.
On embodied carbon, GreenScale says it will measure emissions through lifecycle assessments and prioritise materials and products with documented environmental impacts, in line with the iMasons Climate Accord maturity model. For a campus of this scale, concrete, steel, cladding, mechanical plant, electrical equipment, transport, and site works all carry material carbon before the first server is installed.
The local economic claims are also part of the package. GreenScale says the project is expected to support more than 800 full-time equivalent jobs during construction and around 250 permanent roles once operational, making it the largest private-sector employer in Sirdal. Employment figures for large data centres can shift as designs, procurement, and phasing mature, so the permanent operating base should be tracked alongside construction peaks.
Tonstad gives GreenScale a strong platform: secured power, a cool climate, renewable-heavy electricity, and a large industrial site close to transmission infrastructure. The harder test now sits in execution. The campus will need to show how the power is procured, how cooling is delivered, where heat can go, how backup fuel is secured, and what ESG data customers can actually use once the facility is live.
