Iceland could at least for the west become the main place for data centers. Dan Frommer for ReadWriteWeb:
The biggest costs of running data centers are electricity and electricity. Running the servers and keeping them from overheating consumes a lot of power.
Lucky for Iceland, it has tons of electricity: inexpensive, practically 100%-green power generated by hydroelectric and geothermal plants around the country. Iceland generates more renewable energy per capita than any other country in Europe by far, the power company boasts.
As for cooling, well, it’s almost as simple as leaving the window open.
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In the past the biggest hurdle was bandwidth: Iceland didn’t have the right underseas cables to support high-speed, low-latency data centers. Now it does, and new cables may eventually connect it with Canada, New York and Ireland, adding more capacity and quicker speeds.
Because of the small size of the country even middle sized data centers could have a siginificant impact on Icelands economy. This in turn can easily lead to a friendly regulatory climate for interested companies making the country even more attractive.
