Renewable energy firm Friesen Elektra is exploring the construction of a data center in the region of Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany.

According to NWZonline, which broke the story, the company has applied for a zoning exemption that would permit the construction of a data center at the site of its planned green hydrogen production facility, ‘Wasserstoffpark Friesland,’ outside the town of Sande and located between the B436 and A29 roads.

No details have been released as to the project’s likely IT compute capacity. The hydrogen park as a whole is targeting 400MW of power generation. DCD has approached Friesen Elektra for comment.

Sande’s municipal building committee has already met to discuss the zoning exemption application, as the site is not currently zoned to allow the construction of a data center.

According to the briefing document seen by the committee and obtained by NWZonline, any light and noise pollution from the hypothetical data center would be comparable to that of Wasserstoffpark Friesland, which has already been approved by the Sande authorities. The next stage of the planning process will involve the town’s administrative committee then voting on the application in a non-public session, before the matter is passed to the district authorities for approval.

Friesen Elektra spokesperson Karsten Gleich told NWZonline that any data center at Wasserstoffpark Friesland would be powered by the 380 kV high-voltage grid at and from regional surpluses of green electricity, but would not draw from the grid supplying local houses and businesses. Cooling would be provided by the extension of the closed-loop water system already planned for the green hydrogen facility, which is designed to utilise a combination of wastewater, seawater drainage, and surface drainage from the nearby Ems-Jade Canal.

Founded in 1999, Friesen Elektra operates several wind and solar power plants throughout northern Germany. It received approval for Wasserstoffpark Friesland in June. The electrolysis facility is designed to have an initial capacity of 400MW and produce up to 80,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually. If a data center is built at the site, it will add to a small but growing market in the region. Though Lower Saxony only hosts five facilities, according to DataCenters.com, several new projects are planned. These include a 500MW data center announced in April by Telis Energie Deutschland outside Hanover, and another project of indeterminate IT compute capacity revealed for Wilhelmshaven in May.

Learn more about the data center market in Switzerland and the wider DACH region, and meet with other executives and experts at the DCN Zurich event later this year.