Kesko’s 2024 Annual Report has been published
Waste heat from a data center to heat a K-Supermarket for the first time in Finland – innovative solution reduces emissions
The K-Supermarket Mankkaa grocery store and atNorth's data center in Espoo are launching a groundbreaking collaboration in which waste heat from the data center will be used to cover almost all the heating energy needed by the store. The project will reduce emissions from all of Kesko's district heating use by almost one percent.
Located on adjacent plots in Mankkaa, Espoo, K-Supermarket Mankkaa and the Nordic atNorth data center are addressing each other's challenges with this new collaboration. Kesko has been seeking ways to further reduce its store emissions, and the data center, which became operational in early April, has been seeking for a target to direct the waste heat generated in cooling its IT equipment.
In autumn 2024, Kesko set new short-term scope 1 and 2 emission reduction targets, aiming for a 50% reduction by the end of 2034. A significant portion of Kesko's emissions from own operations (scope 1 and scope 2) comes from the consumption of district heating. Reducing these emissions requires investments and new solutions from Kesko.
"One of the key investment measures for our ambitious emission reduction targets is to reduce the emissions from the heating use of our properties. With this new collaboration, we will get almost all the heating energy needed by the store from the waste heat of the data center, which can be supplemented with district heating if necessary, for example, during severe cold weather. The waste heat energy used in the store corresponds to the district heating consumption of some 120 small houses per year. As an individual project, this is one of our most significant emission reduction measures this year," says Antti Kokkonen, Director of Energy, Kesko.
atNorth’s data center, called FIN02, is the company’s third data center in Finland.
“atNorth wants to create long-term value for the communities where we operate. Our new data center is designed to support both Finnish and international companies with their growing digital needs, providing secure and energy-efficient spaces for businesses to run and store their data”, says Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO atNorth.
“We are pleased to showcase beneficial collaborations that support our vision of data center ecosystems that fundamentally contribute to the communities in which we operate. By collaborating with likeminded businesses, like Kesko, we can not only mitigate our own carbon consumption but assist others too.”
K-Supermarket Mankkaa and atNorth’s data center are located on adjacent plots in Espoo. In the photo from the left: Kesko‘s Energy Specialist Tommi Martikainen, atNorth‘s Project Manager Joonas Tawast and Kesko‘s Director of Energy Antti Kokkonen.
Seeking new ways to reduce emissions to achieve targets
One of Kesko's key emission reduction actions is to reduce emissions from heating energy use by improving energy efficiency and updating heating solutions. In addition to conventional methods, achieving strict emissions targets requires entirely new ways of reducing emissions.
"Utilising the waste heat from the data center in just one store, K-Supermarket Mankkaa, reduces the emissions from Kesko's district heating use by 0.9 percent, or about 200 tCO2-eq per year. We have hundreds of properties using district heating in Finland, so we are open to similar new ideas elsewhere as well," says Kokkonen.
A heat pump system enabling the utilisation of waste heat will be installed in K-Supermarket Mankkaa in the autumn. In practice, the store can start receiving waste heat from the data center around November 2025 - January 2026.
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