Volkswagen AG announces climate-neutral plans

Volkswagen AG, the first automaker to commit to the Paris climate agreement, has announced its new climate-neutral plans, which detail that its data center activities will be carbon-neutral by 2027. This is three years earlier than expected in the European Green Deal, which committed European data center operators to making their facilities climate-neutral by 2030. Volkswagen Group has six data centers across the globe: three in Wolfsburg, two in Norway, and one in Singapore. The company will reportedly achieve this green goal by increasing its computing capacity at Green Mountain, which powers its data centers with 100% renewable energy from hydropower and naturally cools them with the neighboring 100-meter-deep fjord, which has a water temperature of 8 degrees Celsius, all year long.

The company first struck up a partnership with Norwegian Green Mountain back in 2019, but its most recent expansion to Green Mountain's SVG1-Rennesy data center means that one-quarter of its global computing power requirements will be carbon-neutral, with yearly CO2 savings of 10,000 tonnes.

Hauke Stars, a Member of the Board of Management, IT, and Digitalisation, explained: "Green IT is a key topic on our ESG agenda. While technology is the key driver for more efficiency, an improved customer experience, and new business models, IT accounts for about 3% of global CO₂ emissions."

Stars added: "Given the rising demand for computing power and data storage to enable Volkswagen Group's NEW AUTO strategy, a sustainable IT roadmap with ambitious goals is paramount to systematically reducing our carbon footprint. With data centres being the biggest contributor of carbon emissions in IT, expanding our computing capacity at Green Mountain is a strong lever to make our data centre operations carbon-neutral by 2027."