atNorth: Europe's Path to Sustainable Sovereignty in AI

Rapid advancements in AI, alongside the urgent demand for sustainable digital infrastructure, situate Europe at a pivotal juncture in fostering a resilient digital landscape.

Digital sovereignty — the ability to independently manage and secure digital assets and technologies — is emerging as a strategic imperative for Europe in its sustainable evolution.

Fredrik Jansson, Chief Strategy and Marketing & Communications Officer at Nordic data centre services company atNorth, says achieving digital sovereignty is “not just investment, but the right investment” that will enable Europe to build geopolitical resilience, economic independence and sustained competitiveness.

The importance of sustainable digital sovereignty

Europe's reliance on non-European tech providers exposes vulnerabilities and restricts strategic autonomy. Fredrik highlights how Europe must navigate these dependencies while embracing the sustainability imperative. Hyperscalers like AWS, Google and Microsoft dominate the cloud ecosystem, creating both ecological impacts and technological dependencies.

Rather than pursuing complete disengagement from these global giants, Fredrik emphasises that Europe should develop a digital infrastructure landscape that includes both sustainable European providers and global hyperscalers to foster a resilient and ecologically balanced market.

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

“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.”

With the EU and national governments recognising the critical need for investment, Europe stands poised for concerted efforts toward sustainable digital sovereignty.

The European Data Centre Association’s (EUDCA) report highlights that Europe's ability to “stand on its own feet” sustainably relies on the investment in scalable, robust and autonomous data centers.

Fredrik stresses the necessity for these investments to align with strategic sustainability objectives.

“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. 

“However, this new spotlight also casts some harsh shadows: what sort of sovereignty do we want? What can we achieve? And, fundamentally, what do we need now and in the immediate future?”

Europe’s strength in sustainable data centres

Countering narratives portraying Europe as a ‘digital desert,’ Fredrik emphasises the continent's existing strengths: a skilled workforce, considerable data centre capacity, and leading sustainable data centres globally.

atNorth, for instance, champions sustainable data centre solutions, heavily relying on renewable energy sources.

In Nordic countries, operations benefit from low carbon electricity like Iceland’s fully renewable energy grid and the Nordic region’s minimal carbon intensity of 62g CO2e/kWh, starkly lower than the US average of 548 grams.

“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 cautions against investment strategies that dilute resources across multiple states for political gains. Fredrik advocates for targeted, impactful investment that maximizes sustainability, harnessing regional competencies and economies of scale.

“The Nordic region, for example, stands out as an attractive location for data centre development, particularly for AI workloads,” he explains. “Its natural advantages, including abundant renewable energy resources and cooler climates, help lower cooling costs and contribute to sustainability. 

“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.”

Strategic, sustainable investment for a resilient future

Fredrik envisions Europe’s path to digital sovereignty through strategic, sustainable infrastructure investments, in sync with evolving AI workloads and market dynamics.

“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 emphasises. 

“Strategic investment should leverage Europe’s existing strengths and leverage the diversity and natural advantages it contains.”

Fredrik remains steadfast that Europe’s future hinges on smart, sustainable investment strategies—not indiscriminate funding—leveraging existing ecological strengths to foster innovation and ensure sustainable digital autonomy moving forward.

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