Norwegian companies, Green Mountain and Norwegian Lobster Farm signed an agreement on the reuse of waste heat from the data center in the world’s first land-based lobster farm. The project represents an innovative example of circular economy, using waste heat for food production and reducing the carbon footprint significantly.

Norwegian Lobster Farm is the first company in the world to produce plate-sized lobsters in a land-based fish farm. Their current facilities use RAS as well as advanced robotics, computer vision systems and automatic and continuous monitoring of each individual lobster. To grow optimally, the lobster needs a temperature of 20°C in the seawater. This is exactly the temperature of the seawater that has been used to cool the IT equipment in Green Mountain’s data center. Green Mountain can therefore deliver this heated wastewater directly to the farm.

Cooling a data center usually accounts for an additional 40-80% of the electricity required to power the servers. Green Mountain uses an innovative fjord cooling solution for this purpose. Seawater enters the facility with a temperature of 8°C and the facility releases the water back into the fjord with a temperature of 20°C. The plan is to build a new production facility adjacent to the data center to use the heated seawater directly to breed lobsters. 

“In practical terms, this means that we can scale up production. We can reduce technical risk, and save both CAPEX and OPEX. In addition to the environmental benefits, of course,” said CEO of Norwegian Lobster Farm, Asbjørn Drengstig.