Groundbreaking ceremony for first sustainable YEXIO data center at Heiligenhaus Innovation Park

This marks a milestone for the first project of the partnership between HOCHTIEF and infrastructure investor Palladio Partners, from which a network of decentral data centers in Germany is planned to be created. The shared aim is to bring the sustainability of data centers to a new level

Michael Beck, Mayor of the City of Heiligenhaus: “The YEXIO data center at the Innovation Park is an important pillar for the further development of this business location. It shows our engagement for environmental protection and technological progress. The sustainable data center creates synergies, promotes innovation and reinforces our position as an attractive business location, especially for companies that prefer computing power and data storage close to their headquarters.”

Building completion and commissioning of the YEXIO data center on an approximately 9,000-square-meter plot in Heiligenhaus is slated for Q2 2025. The following features, among others, provide for energy efficiency and sustainability of the data center:

• Thanks to innovative direct water cooling, a better waste heat level compared to air-cooled data centers can be achieved, thus providing for the efficient further use of energy.
• The use of wood for the structure and the facade can save and store CO₂.
• The green facade promotes biodiversity.

Martina Steffen, Member of the Executive Board of HOCHTIEF: “In our corporate strategy, sustainability plays a central role and is an integral element of the HOCHTIEF value system. This is reflected, among others, in our Sustainability Plan 2025. We are also continuously striving to further strengthen our position in growth markets, as for example in the field of data centers. Accordingly, HOCHTIEF Data Center Partner GmbH with its sustainable YEXIO data centers is a significant component of our corporate strategy.”

In Germany in particular, the YEXIO data centers with their focus on sustainability address local requirements on computing power, so-called edge computing. Originating in Germany, they also take into account many companies’ need to handle their sensitive data locally. Due to the innovative cooling, the data center can also deliver higher performance, benefiting the trend towards applications with AI, for example. All this can be seen against the background of a continuous growth trend in the data center market: Between 2010 and 2022, Germany saw capacity growth of more than 90%, in relation to IT connection capacity. The expected strong growth is especially promising in the field of edge data centers: In 2022, the global market was valued at USD 10 billion, with a forecast annual growth of 23% until 2028. These developments are driven by various factors, including the 3 increasing proliferation of IoT devices, the introduction of 5G networks, and the growing need for real-time data processing for applications such as smart cities

Bernd Kreuter, Managing Partner at Palladio Partners: “In our investments, we not only focus on business potential, but also on a project’s sustainability while always taking into consideration its life cycle. The joint project with HOCHTIEF meets all these criteria. We are now looking forward to the start of construction of the first YEXIO data center.”

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