Technology, digital services, and consulting company Infosys announced today plans to transfer Daimler’s computing workloads to one of Europe’s greenest data centers, helping the automotive company achieve its carbon neutrality goals.

According to Infosys, Daimler’s High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads, used to design vehicles and automated driving technologies, will be moved to the Lefdal Mine Datacenter (LMD) in Norway. LMD is situated in a mine next to a cold fjord with low temperatures. The data center is not affected by warm days and doesn’t require evaporative systems for cooling, with water usage effectiveness also rated zero. The region is also supplied with 100& renewable power production.

Jørn Skaane, Chief Executive Officer, Lefdal Mine Datacenter AS, said:

“We have built and operate a leading sustainable, secure and cost-effective data center – The Norwegian Solution. With short travelled renewable power and cooling from the nearby fjord, sustainability is in the core of our mission and values. Our ambition is to be the greenest data center in the world, with the ability to offer tailor-made and scalable data center solutions. We are inspired to have been chosen to host Daimler HPC workloads and will contribute for Daimler to become CO2 neutral.”

According to Infosys, data centers account for around 1% of total global energy use, with service demand expected to increase 60% by 2022. The company expects high performance workloads to be critical to automakers’ competitiveness in the mobility industry as next generation technologies continue to develop. Yet, these workloads contribute considerably to the carbon footprint of enterprises worldwide.

Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys, said:

“Infosys is a strategic partner to organizations navigating decarbonization and we are well positioned to deliver sustainable green transformation leveraging expertise gained from decade-long efforts in environment stewardship. We pioneer projects around the world across every industry to facilitate climate change actions, developing solutions and services to help clients in their low-carbon transition. In delivering this transformation for Daimler we’ve shown how Green Infrastructure as a Service can radically reduce organizations’ impact on the environment and the vast potential for other organizations running high compute enterprise workloads to benefit from this industry-leading sustainability offering.”

Daimler has committed to becoming CO2 neutral by 2039, as part of its “Ambition 2039” strategy. In order to help facilitate this goal, Infosys offered a solution to shift Daimler’s HPCs to green infrastructure using Infosys’ Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) offering. Through the initiative, Infosys will manage the IT infrastructure in its entirety, with LMD providing the facility.

Jan Brecht, Chief Information Officer, Daimler, and Mercedes-Benz, said:

“A large proportion of our IT energy consumption comes from our data centers which require significant power for computing and cooling. That’s why we’re transforming our data centers with the support of our partner Infosys, bringing particularly the high-performance computing into one energy efficient solution at Lefdal Mine Datacenter. Not only will we benefit from natural cooling thanks to the cold weather, our operations will also be run on 100% green energy. This initiative marks another important milestone on our journey to becoming CO2 neutral.”