I was Wrong – Green Europe is Building at Least One US Scale AI – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

A 230MW AI campus to be powered by Norwegian Hydro has been announced – but competition for electricity and rising prices are already causing political unrest.

July 31, 2025 Global Affairs

Introducing Stargate Norway

We’re launching Stargate Norway—OpenAI’s first AI data center initiative in Europe under our OpenAI for Countries⁠ program. Stargate is OpenAI’s overarching infrastructure platform and is a critical part of our long-term vision to deliver the benefits of AI to everyone.

AI is a foundational technology that can boost productivity, drive economic growth, and power new industries. Large-scale compute capacity in Europe will help ensure that this transformation benefits people and communities including developers, researchers, scientists, and startups across Norway and Europe.

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Stargate Norway is planned to deliver 230MW of capacity, with ambitions to expand by an additional 290MW. The facility will target to deliver 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026, with the intention to expand significantly in the years ahead. OpenAI welcomes the opportunity to be an initial offtaker with the option to scale over time under the OpenAI for Countries program.

This is one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure investments in Europe to date. Narvik’s abundant hydropower, low-cost energy, cool climate, and mature industrial base make it an ideal location to deliver large-scale, sustainable AI capacity.

The facility will run entirely on renewable power and is expected to incorporate closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling to ensure maximum cooling efficiency. Additionally, excess heat from the GPU systems will be made available to support low-carbon enterprises in the region.

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Read more: https://openai.com/index/introducing-stargate-norway/

Sounds like a great idea in principle – if you have abundant hydro energy, and it ticks all the green boxes, why not use it?

The problem is there is not enough Norwegian hydroelectricity.

From February this year;

Blackout Britain threat rises on collapse of Norwegian government

Hannah Boland
Sat, February 1, 2025 at 12:07 AM GMT+10

Britain risks being left more vulnerable to blackouts as a political row in Norway over power exports escalates.

The Norwegian government collapsed this week following a row over EU green energy laws. A junior coalition partner in the government quit in protest at plans to implement the policies, amid a broader rise in energy nationalism in the country.

Experts said the collapse raised questions over Britain’s reliance on Norwegian energy imports to keep the lights on. Last weekend, Norway accounted for 4pc of the UK’s power, coming via cables that run under the North Sea.

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Britain is expected to become increasingly reliant on electricity imports under Ed Miliband’s net zero push as Labour seeks to decarbonise the grid by switching to intermittent renewables, with wind power forming a crucial pillar of its plans.

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Electricity exports have become a flashpoint in Norway, where the public has been facing soaring energy prices in recent years. Critics have claimed the undersea interconnector cables force prices higher.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/blackout-britain-threat-rises-collapse-140740392.html

If Norwegians feel this strongly about sending a few gigawatts of electricity to Britain, how will they feel about foreign owned AI systems slurping all their hydroelectricity?

If the Norwegian hydropower runs short, as it did in 2022 when a severe drought threatened water supplies, who will be the first to have their power cut? Will Norwegian industry be sacrificed to keep the OpenAI campus running?

Hydropower is a great starter energy system. As Willis once pointed out hydro truly is the cheapest form of power, and can help kickstart industrial development in poor countries. But once all the easy hydro sites have been exploited, it is difficult to expand hydro capacity. And when competition for electricity heats up, as it already has in Norway, someone is going to walk away disappointed.

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