Countries / Europe
Iceland
Iceland offers near-fully renewable power for AI data centres and is expanding substations and long-term supply contracts.
Iceland's electricity is about 70% hydro and 30% geothermal. Data centres took an estimated 5 to 6% of national power demand in 2022 and 2023, and the sector has shifted from bitcoin mining to AI hosting. Landsvirkjun has signed an extra 12 MW of firm supply for Borealis at Blonduos, equipped for liquid-cooled NVIDIA systems, and Verne and Landsnet switched on the largest privately owned substation on the Reykjanes peninsula in May 2025. A new Industrial Policy names data centre growth as an opportunity. For someone seeking compute, Iceland is a colocation and cloud host rather than a public compute provider.
AI policy and activity
EuroHPC lists Iceland as an AI Factory Antenna in the Finnish LUMI group. We did not collect a national AI strategy or AI Act status.
Power and grid
A July 2026 report in The Parliament Magazine puts generation at about 70% hydro and 30% geothermal and says Iceland uses only about 20% of the energy it produces for homes and local industry, with the rest sold to industry including aluminium smelters and increasingly data centres.
Data centres and compute
| Site | Where | Status | Notes and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Borealis Blonduos campus Borealis Data Center | Blonduos | Operating | Being equipped for the latest liquid-cooled NVIDIA infrastructure. Borealis also has sites in Reykjavik and Reykjanesbaer. (source) |
| Verne Keflavik campus Verne | Keflavik | Operating | A new high-capacity substation with Landsnet was switched on on 19 May 2025 to support HPC and AI growth. (source) |
Rules and programmes
| Instrument | Kind | Status | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iceland Industrial Policy | Policy | In force | We read only a utility news release that says the recently published policy identifies data centre growth as an opportunity. We did not read the policy itself. |
| Landsvirkjun power purchase agreement with Borealis | Grid | In force | Adds 12 MW of firm power at Blonduos to existing contracts. |
Checked on 2 October 2026 and due for review by 1 January 2027. Many sources are trade press or law-firm summaries rather than official texts, and statuses such as reported or unconfirmed are shown as the source gives them. This is a summary, not legal advice. If something is wrong or out of date, tell us.