To the press and to whom it may concern

April 23rd, 2021
White Data Center Inc.

The Commencement of “Zero CO2 Emissions” Data Center

Founded by White Data Center Inc.

Kyodo News Digital Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Masakazu Hosoda) have established a new company, White Data Center Inc. (Headquarters: Bibai City, Hokkaido, CEO: Shinichi Ijichi), to promote the White Data Center business (hereinafter referred to as “WDC Business”).

As a “zero CO2 emissions” data center, the WDC business utilizes snow waste for cooling the data center, and also uses waste heat from server together with cold energy from snow for air conditioning to cultivate agricultural products and land based aquaculture. In addition, also planning a renewable energy power plant business for local consumption.

White Data Center Inc.. was established as a 100% subsidiary of Kyodo News Digital on April 1st, 2021 with a capital of 50 million yen. And later time, Toko Electrical Construction Co., Ltd (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Hiroaki Aoki), P.S. Mitsubishi Construction Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Takuya Mori), Snow-shop Kobiyama Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Bibai City, Hokkaido; Representative Director: Kota Honma) invested in the company and participated in the WDC business as a partner aiming for 700million yen worth sales in the next 5 years.

History

Kyodo News Digital Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Kyodo News Digital) has been planning to enter the data center business since 2011 and has continued to explore.

During that time, Kyodo News Digital made an encounter with White Data Center concept (WDC concept) by Bibai Nature Energie Research Association centered on Bibai City and Snow-shop Kobiyama Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Snow-shop Kobiyama”, and in 2012 participated in the Bibai WDC Project Consortium. In 2014 it was selected for a research project by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization), and when the research project was completed in February 2019 received a high evaluation from NEDO.

The new company was established to take over these concepts and commercialize them.

What is White Data Center Business?

WDC is a data center that achieves zero CO2 emissions by using cold energy from snow removal and renewable energy.

Technically, it’s not hard to build a 100% renewable energy data center, but creating a data center as such with cost effectiveness that can withstand commercial use is challenging.

WDC uses snow that are removed from streets by local government thus to greatly reduces the cost.

As a result, the PUE* value is 1.04 even in the summer, making it one of the top-class energy-saving data centers in Japan.

*What is PUE?

PUE stands for Power Usage Effectiveness, an indicator of the energy efficiency used for facilities in the data center. With PUE value 1.04 in the summer, means that WDC to be one of the top-class energy-saving data centers in Japan.

How to Calculate: Overall electric consumption / Electric consumption of servers = PUE

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