atNorth: Europe’s Data Centres Key to Digital Sovereignty

Europe’s push toward digital sovereignty is gaining momentum as policymakers and infrastructure providers respond to growing demand for high-performance computing and AI capacity. 

For Nordic data centre provider atNorth, the priority is clear: strategic investment, focused on sustainability and scale, must underpin the continent’s infrastructure future.

Fredrik Jansson, Chief Strategy and Marketing & Communications Officer at atNorth, believes Europe’s long-term competitiveness depends not just on funding, but on where and how that investment is made.

Europe must reduce dependency while keeping balance

Concerns around digital sovereignty are intensifying as Europe assesses its dependency on global hyperscale providers. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google dominate the AI and cloud ecosystem, creating both opportunity and vulnerability.

Fredrik does not call for severing ties with these firms. Instead, he argues that Europe should work towards a diversified infrastructure market that provides both choice and resilience.

“It remains a big ask to build a European hyperscaler or the next OpenAI,” he says.

“We must recognise that US hyperscalers like AWS, Google and Microsoft are an essential and indispensable part of the European digital ecosystem. While concerns about dependency and external pressures are legitimate, hyperscalers offer scale, technology and cybersecurity capabilities that are currently hard to match.

“The goal must be to offer European customers a choice of infrastructure that includes both robust European providers and global hyperscalers, fostering a balanced market rather than pursuing complete disconnection.”

This view aligns with the European Data Centre Association’s (EUDCA) 2025 report, which states that Europe's ability to “stand on its own feet” depends on strengthening its domestic data centre footprint.

Fredrik says political will is rising. “2025 has seen the sovereignty argument, which has been brewing for a number of years, suddenly explode onto the political scene,” he says.

“The benefit of this is that politicians of all parties, across both national and EU jurisdictions, recognise the need for significant investment.”

Nordic region offers proven advantages

Europe is often described as lagging behind in AI infrastructure, but Fredrik challenges this framing. 

He points to the continent’s technical skills, energy profile and operational capabilities — particularly in the Nordic countries — as assets that make it well-suited to support AI growth.

atNorth operates high-density, low-emission data centres across the Nordic countries. The company is among a growing number of European providers offering full-stack colocation and infrastructure services for AI, cloud and enterprise workloads.

The region’s access to low-carbon electricity is a core strength. Iceland’s energy grid is fully powered by renewables, while the Nordic average carbon intensity of electricity sits at 62g CO2e/kWh — compared to 548g CO2e/kWh in the United States.

“As sustainability remains a vital concern this could provide added impetus to locate high intensity workloads in European data centres,” Fredrik says.

“This is an area of leadership and advantage that we should emphasise.”

He warns, however, against distributing investment evenly across all EU countries for political reasons, calling instead for a targeted strategy.

“It makes sense, therefore, to make the Nordics the home for energy-intensive AI training and inference workloads while other geographics can cater to other cloud and digitalisation demands.”

Infrastructure investment must follow AI demand

For Fredrik, sovereignty and sustainability are linked. He believes investment should focus on locations where infrastructure can deliver the best results over the long term.

“While we can all agree that both significant investment and a renewed focus on building Europe’s own digital capability and autonomy are important, let’s make sure we get the right investment for the right things in the right places,” he says.

That means scaling where renewable energy is abundant, where cooling costs are lower and where land and talent can support long-term deployment of AI-ready capacity.

He concludes: “This requires a balanced approach, moving beyond simply increasing spending to making smart, targeted investments that build on existing strengths and future needs.”