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‘Sweden is heaven for cloud computing’: Amazon Nordic chief

The head of Nordic operations for Amazon Web Services (AWS) has spelled out exactly why the US cloud computing giant chose to locate three state-of-the-art data centers in Sweden.

Published: 14 June 2017 07:00 CEST
Updated: 2 August 2017 07:00 CEST

'Sweden is heaven for cloud computing': Amazon Nordic chief

Darren Mowry of Amazon Web Services. Photo: AWS

In April, it emerged that AWS planned to open a new infrastructure region for its cloud computing services in the Stockholm region in 2018.

Sweden’s enterprise and innovation minister Mikael Damberg hailed the deal as “huge” for Sweden.

“They could do that wherever in the world, but chose to do it here,” he added.

Now the man responsible for expanding AWS’s cloud services operations in Sweden, American Darren Mowry, has disclosed the reasoning behind his company’s decision to invest in Sweden.

“Sweden truly does have it all,” Mowry writes in a blog post published on the Data Centers by Sweden website.

But there’s more to it than that.

Read his full explanation behind the AWS investment here.

This article was produced by The Local Client Studio and sponsored by Data Centers by Sweden.

Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa.

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology.

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces.

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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