Facebook announced Thursday that it would immediately begin building a massive data centre –its third globally and first in Europe – in the Swedish town of Luleaa, near the Arctic Circle. “After a rigorous review process of sites across Europe, we concluded that Luleaa offered the best package of resources, including a suitable climate for environmental cooling (and) clean power resources,” said the world’s largest social media site, which counts more than 800 million users worldwide. The icy region was especially attractive due to its cool climate, “since cooling servers is a major issue for data centres,” Facebook said, adding Luleaa also fulfilled its requirement that the data centre primarily run on renewable hydropower. The first building would be open for business within a year, it said, while the entire data centre was expected to be up and running by 2014.
