Business
Iceland Exports Energy as Data
- Wednesday, April 11, 2012
- By Lucas Laursen
An arctic nation looks to large-scale computing for an economic boost.
Cold calculation: Components of a data center arrive by ship to Iceland, a country with abundant and inexpensive electricity.
Credit: Verne Global
Iceland's main exports are aluminum and fish. Now the isolated nation is hoping to offer the world a new commodity: a cheap, guiltless way to store its data.
In February, a startup called Verne Global opened a large server farm on an old NATO base near Iceland's main airport and began offering "100% renewable" computing services to the rest of the world. It's one of three data centers in Iceland and part of what Iceland's government hopes will be a new local industry.
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