Description
The Greenhouse Project pairs an air-cooled data center container (600 kW) operated by Genesis Digital Assets with an adjacent greenhouse, using the heat generated by mining/computing hardware to maintain a stable ~25°C growing environment even when outdoor temperatures fall to -30°C. Initiated by Boden Business Agency to create synergies between energy-intensive IT industries and the local food cluster, the project's first greenhouse is 300m2 and was scientifically designed by RISE and Luleå University of Technology, who also modeled airflow, humidity, and control systems needed to balance data center and greenhouse conditions. Beyond vegetables, the underlying concept could extend to fish, insect, and algae farming, and to drying biomass, fruits, or vegetables, with calculations suggesting a 1 MW facility could partially heat a 10,000m2 greenhouse and raise local food self-sufficiency by roughly 8%. The project is as much social as technical: it gives people outside the labour market an opportunity to learn farming skills, and its partners view it as a proof-of-concept and showcase intended to demonstrate the viability of data-center-heated greenhouses and support replication of the model at other locations.