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Apple spending €1.7bn on two new datacentres in Europe

The two facilities, built in Ireland and Denmark, will run entirely on renewable energy.
Written by Jo Best, Contributor

Apple is to build two new datacentres in Europe powered by renewable energy.

The company announced plans for the two new sites on Monday, both of which will run entirely on "clean, renewable energy sources from day one".

"These facilities will have the lowest environmental impact yet for an Apple datacentre," Apple added.

Both datacentres will have 166,000 square metres of floor space and construction of the two facilities, which should go live in 2017, will cost €1.7bn. "This significant new investment represents Apple's biggest project in Europe to date," Apple CEO Tim Cook said.

Apple has chosen County Galway in Ireland and the central Jutland area of Denmark to house the two sites. According to local press reports, the €1.7bn spend will be split equally between the two facilities and create hundreds of jobs in both countries.

In Jutland, the company said it would put the datacentre next to a large electricity substation so additional generators aren't necessary for the site, and it plans to capture waste heat from the datacentre and use it to warm local homes.

The company added it will work with local companies to create new renewable energy projects in future, particularly around wind energy - an area Apple believes Jutland and Galway are strong in.

Apple already has two significant datacentres in Europe: one located in Cork, Ireland, and another in the German city of Munich.

The two datacentres are not the first Apple facilities to use renewable energy: the company announced last March that all of its sites were running on 100 percent renewable energy, and at the start of the year invested $850m in the construction of a 280MW solar farm in North Carolina. It has also reportedly acquired a small hydroelectric plant to help power a facility under construction in Oregon.

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