The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate has granted data centre operator Interxion up to €131 million in climate subsidy, according to the EU state aid register, which published the award on 4 November.
The money comes from SDE++, the national scheme that pays companies to produce renewable energy or cut CO2 emissions, and the award was decided on 24 June.
The project list of the government agency RVO shows what it pays for: waste heat upgraded with a heat pump, at Pudongweg 37a in the Schiphol-Rijk business district in Haarlemmermeer, for 15 years.
That is up to about €8.8 million a year. The list marks the project as not yet running.
Heat for business parks
Interxion, owned by the American group Digital Realty since 2020, announced in 2021 that its AMS5 data centre in Schiphol-Rijk would feed waste heat into the local heat network of Polderwarmte, which serves the business parks there.
A heat pump raises the lukewarm server heat to a usable temperature.
The partners expected to supply 45,000 gigajoules of heat to the RichPort and Starpark business parks at the start, saving about 1.5 million cubic metres of gas, rising to 75,000 gigajoules after five years.
A sector the region is trying to limit
The subsidy goes to an industry that local councils are trying to keep out.
Amsterdam has stopped new large data centres, and alderman Zita Pels proposed extending that stop to 2035.
Haarlemmermeer said it would allow no new data centres until 2030, yet new ones are still being planned there.
Promises of reusing data centre heat have a mixed record: heat from the Microsoft and Google sites in the Wieringermeer largely never reached the greenhouses it was meant for, because at 25 to 35 degrees it was too cool.
We found no announcement of the award by the ministry or by Interxion; it became public through the EU register more than four months after it was granted.
Sources: rvo.nl, polderwarmte.nl, duurzaam-ondernemen.nl, binnenlandsbestuur.nl, binnenlandsbestuur.nl, ftm.nl, wikipedia.org