With pressure mounting on data centres to cut carbon emissions and optimise power use effectively, businesses must adopt innovative solutions without compromising performance. Antti Kokkonen, Director of Energy at Kesko, discusses the retailer’s partnership with atNorth and how the company is reusing heat to reduce emissions at a flagship store, highlighting a scalable model for lower-carbon operations.
atNorth, a leading Nordic high-density colocation and built-to-suit data centre provider, has announced that its heat reuse partnership with Kesko Corporation is delivering waste heat generated at atNorth’s FIN02 data centre in Espoo, Finland, to a neighboring branch of the Finnish retail giant.
The project marks a significant milestone in atNorth’s ongoing commitment to integrating circular economy principles into its operations. By repurposing excess heat generated by the data centre’s infrastructure, the collaboration will supply almost all of the heating required by the adjacent Kesko store, reducing reliance on district heating and lowering emissions for both organisations.
For Kesko, the project supports its target of achieving a 58.8% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions, a large portion of which results from heating its buildings. The recycled heat from FIN02 is expected to reduce Kesko’s emissions from district heating use by approximately 200 tons of CO₂ equivalent per year, representing around 0.9% of Kesko’s district heating emissions.
“Reducing emissions from the heating of our properties is a key priority within our sustainability strategy,” said Antti Kokkonen, Director of Energy at Kesko. “Through this collaboration with atNorth, we are able to significantly cut emissions at one of our stores while demonstrating how innovative partnerships can accelerate the transition to lower-carbon operations.”
The initiative also highlights the broader role data centres can play in supporting local energy ecosystems. By capturing and repurposing surplus heat, the project enhances the energy efficiency of the FIN02 facility while contributing to Finland’s wider circular economy ambitions.
“As demand for AI-ready digital infrastructure continues to grow, it is essential that data centres scale responsibly,” said Erling Gudmundsson, COO of atNorth. “This project demonstrates how data centres can become active contributors to local energy systems. By recycling excess heat, we can reduce our client’s environmental footprint while supporting our partners’ sustainability goals and delivering tangible benefits to the surrounding community.”
The FIN02 facility is part of atNorth’s expanding presence across the Nordics and forms a key element of the company’s strategy to develop sustainable digital infrastructure across the region.
I sat down with Antti Kokkonen, Director of Energy at Kesko, who shed light on the partnership with atNorth and how it has revolutionised business operations for the company.
What are your key strategic priorities as Director of Energy at Kesko?
Kesko operates across eight countries in Northern Europe and managing energy use is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, cost control is essential in order to succeed in highly competitive markets. Secondly, as a forerunner in corporate sustainability, Kesko aims to reduce the climate emissions caused by its operations, one significant source of which is the use of heating energy in retail buildings. In recent years, the role of emissions in energy management has become increasingly important.
How does this project with atNorth align with these priorities?
One of the Kesko stores, K-Supermarket Mankkaa in Espoo – close to Helsinki, Finland – is a historical building which is partly protected due to its architectural heritage. It is also one of the largest individual consumers of heating energy among Kesko’s retail locations. Carrying out energy efficiency measures in a protected building has proven challenging.
However, when atNorth began developing its data centre next to the store, an opportunity emerged to reduce heating-related emissions by utilising waste heat produced by our neighbour. atNorth’s infrastructure at the new FIN02 site was able to repurpose the excess heat generated by the data centre to supply our store with the heating required. As the building had previously relied heavily on district heating with associated climate emissions, this cooperation has enabled a significant reduction in Kesko’s overall emissions impact.
Can you explain how the heat reuse system works in practice and how the partnership with atNorth enables you to supply recycled heat to your nearby retail branch?
The data centre generates significant amounts of waste heat as a result of data processing. This waste heat has to be removed from the data centre using its own cooling systems. We are able to utilise this waste heat by raising its temperature to a suitable level with the help of heat pumps. The building’s heating network was already in place and previously the heat was supplied almost entirely from the district heating network. Today, most of that district heating has been replaced by heat produced by the heat pumps through this collaboration with atNorth, demonstrating how innovative partnerships like this can result in lower-carbon operations across multiple businesses.
How does this initiative support Kesko’s emission reduction targets and what measurable impact do you expect it to have?
In 2024, we set ambitious targets to reduce Kesko’s own so-called Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 58.8% by 2034. These targets were also approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in January 2026. In 2024, nearly 30% of these emissions were caused by the heating required for our building facilities. We aimed to cut these emissions both by shifting to lower-emission heating solutions and by improving energy efficiency and the utilisation of waste heat.
We have already implemented similar waste heat projects in around 100 stores, where heat recovered from grocery store refrigeration systems has been utilised. In this specific case, the source of waste heat is different – a data centre.
The Mankkaa project was the most significant waste heat project implemented in 2025 and delivers annual carbon dioxide emission reductions of approximately 200 tonnes. This corresponds to almost 1% of all emissions related to district heating. At the same time, a 1% reduction also highlights how challenging emission reductions will be in the coming years, as they require significant actions and projects. Even so, I am confident we will achieve our sustainability targets.
What role do you see heat reuse playing in advancing circular economy principles across your operations?
We believe that Kesko – and other organisations – play a significant role in advancing circular economy practices across operations. This is particularly true in Northern Europe where significant heating energy is needed during the Winter months. By making better use of waste heat generated by other processes, such as with atNorth’s FIN02 data centre, we can enhance energy efficiency and substantially reduce climate emissions.
Kesko has many years of experience with such projects – for example, last year more than a quarter of the overall heating demand of our buildings could already be covered through the utilisation of waste heat. Equally, when partnering with atNorth, we were aware of other heat reuse projects across its sites in Denmark, Iceland and Sweden which gave us the confidence to pursue this new project for sourcing waste heat.
Beyond this, there are many industries and organisations generating large amounts of waste heat and societies should be able to make more effective use of this energy to reduce the need for primary energy resources in district heating production. We hope that this project with atNorth can demonstrate how recycling excess heat can reduce environmental footprint while providing real benefits to surrounding communities.
As data centre demand grows, particularly with AI, how important are partnerships like this for ensuring increased energy use is balanced by efficiency gains?
I see partnerships like this as extremely important. Energy systems should be proactively planned wherever possible in order to optimise overall societal benefits. To me, energy efficiency also means that energy can be used for justified purposes – such as data processing in data centres – but that all energy used should always be utilised as efficiently as possible. It would make little sense to release large amounts of heating energy into the air while, at the same time, producing heating energy elsewhere by burning fuels.
In Finland, electricity generation is already almost fully carbon-free, largely due to the increasing role and use of wind power. By utilising the waste heat generated from electricity use – both in data centres and in other processes – we can therefore make much better use of this renewable energy. At the same time, it is essential to ensure the stability of the electricity system, and data centres will certainly have a bigger role to play in this – and to scale responsibly as AI demand continues to accelerate.
Do you see opportunities to expand this model to other locations or deepen your collaboration with atNorth in the future?
I see no barriers to expanding this type of collaboration. In practice, the main limitation is likely related to the location of data centres. In the Mankkaa project, it was essential that the data centre was located next to the store – otherwise the investment would have become too costly.
One way to make better use of the heat produced by data centres is to feed it into the district heating network, which allows the heat to be utilised over a wider area. In Finland, the necessary infrastructure for this is already in place in most locations.
Like Kesko, atNorth is sustainably minded and committed to responsible, community-focused development, which makes partnerships like this naturally successful.
