Location is becoming increasingly important to the Green Data Center marketplace. I've previously noted the popularity of the Columbia River Valley for mega data centers due to its inexpensive and low-carbon hydroelectricity, its climate for cooling, and its fiber optic infrastructure. An Icelandic data center puts location front and center in its promotion.

US company Verne Global cites what it calls the "Icelandic Advantage" of its data center:

"100% Green Energy: All of Iceland's electricity comes from affordable, sustainable geothermal and hydroelectric energy... These resources are 100% renewable, with no green energy price premium...you're guaranteed a supply of continuous, high-quality electricity at a fixed rate...for up to 20 years..."
"Free Cooling The mean annual temperature in Iceland is -0.5°C (30°F) in January and 13°C (55°F) in July...As a result, we can handle power densities of up to 15 to 20 kW per rack using cooling from Iceland's ambient temperature alone."
"Less natural disaster risk than the U.S., U.K. or India"

The company also notes that its data center is in a repurposed military facility, a growing trend.

The Verne Global site offers a strong online presentation of a green data center and offers lots of supporting data, down to the geology of its location, and white papers.

Microsoft considered the country in 2007 as a data center location, but ZDNet reports, "The main reason [rejected Iceland] was that Microsoft decided to locate its data centers no more than 500 miles from large population centers because of latency issues." The attempt to lure Microsoft did yield Price Waterhouse Coopers' Benchmarking Study on Iceland as a Location For Data Centre Activity. More from PWC about Iceland.

(See how a unique Swedish data center is promoting its natural cooling advantage and learn more about innovative approaches to cooling data centers.)

Update 2010.05.20
Another Icelandic company using the country's assets for Green ICT is start-up Greenqloud .

Update 2010.05.28
See data on Iceland and other countries and areas with low CO2e/kWh and on the debate about what is truly clean/green energy.

Update 2010.05.29
See how CloudSigma presents the location-specific benefits of Switzerland and how Verne Global's Icelandic data center is dealing with volcanic ash.

Update 2010.05.30
Icelandic data center ThorDC reports, "Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian software company, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers [signed] an agreement to move a significant part of its electronic data traffic to the Thor Data Center...the Thor data center will be the most eco-friendly data center in the world. This is both due to the type of technology it utilizes and because it uses only renewable energy from local sources."

Update 2011.03.18
Canada weighs in on the advantages of cool locations with a UCSD/McGill "conceptual design" that combines evaporative free cooling with "seasonal ice storage" to obtain a 1.06 PUE. Proponents claim "potential cost savings of 74% and energy savings of 47% through facility changes alone!" Bill St. Arnaud cautions, "...the high costs of telecom in Canada, because of foreign ownership restrictions, undermines the business case for relocating US data centers to this country. Telecom costs in Canada are 8 to 10 times higher than they are in the US. Low cost, ultra high bandwidth connectivity is essential for attracting data centers and can be as important, if not more important than the cost of energy."

Update 2011.03.24
The Wall Street Journal reports, "In Wyoming, the chilly winters and mild summers mean ambient air can be used to cool servers up to nine months of the year, said Jeff McSchooler, vice president of EchoStar Broadcasting. After visiting more than 50 potential sites nationwide, the satellite TV company decided last summer to build a 77,000-square-foot data center in Cheyenne, where even at the height of summer the temperature rarely creeps above 82 degrees." There were other inducements, "promising cheap energy for data centers' enormous power needs [and] the Wyoming legislature recently exempted most data-center software and equipment from sales taxes and appropriated $15 million for infrastructure improvements to potential data-center sites." The article notes, "Other states offer similar advantages. FedEx, for instance, calculates that the data center it opened last month in Colorado Springs, Colo., will be able to keep the cooling systems offline more than 5,000 hours a year."

Update 2011.09.13
Also from The Wall Street Journal, "Google Inc.'s opening of a €200 million ($273 million) server hall in Hamina, Finland, over the weekend is boosting Scandinavian hopes that other big Internet companies will choose to build data centers in the region, attracted by its cold climate and low electricity prices."

Update 2011.10.27
Facebook cites cooling as a reason for locating its data center for Europe, Middle East and Africa in Sweden near the Arctic Circle.

Update 2012.01.02
Green Mountain Data Centre is built into the side of a Norwegian mountain alongside a high-threshold fjord. The geologic feature retains a deep pool of year-round cold water - 8 °C - which the facility uses for cooling. The data center also uses renewable energy.