FB connects world through its center in chilly Swedish city

Few people have heard about the town of Luleaa, but if they are Facebook users, chances are their pictures, status updates and “likes” have passed through this Swedish port near the Arctic Circle.
When the Internet phenomenon picked this chilly spot 725 kilometers north of Stockholm for its first data center outside the United States, it was wooed by the climate — literally and figuratively.
“The already positive business climate was a big reason when we decided to get established in Luleaa,” said Joel Kjellgren, the data center’s 32-year-old manager, as he paced the facility, a concrete building the size of five soccer fields.
The Baltic port lies in a region already dubbed the “Node Pole” for its high company growth, notably in IT and telecoms.
Located just 100 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, Luleaa’s average temperature never exceeds 10 degrees Celsius, except during the three summer months.
This means Facebook can cool down the vast server halls with chill air from just outside, driving the energy cost down and the sustainability factor up. What other power it needs, it gets from hydropower stations along mountain rivers nearby.
“The halls might seem gigantic, and it requires a lot of energy to run them, but imagine if all those people would try to communicate by other means, calling each other, sending e-mails and pictures,” said Kjellgren.
In fact, he said, the energy consumption of an average Facebook user is similar to the calories contained in three bananas or one caffe latte — per year.
Luleaa has yet to see the full impact of the Facebook presence. Two server halls were opened this summer, and the remaining two will be operational in the middle of 2014.
And that’s just the beginning. There is room for two more giant buildings next to the existing one, for a total of 12 server halls if need be.
But five months after the grand opening, the jury is still out on the actual economic benefits for Luleaa’s 46,000 residents, whose livelihood historically relied on steel production.
The business community is all for the project, as are the local politicians, delighted to see their small town on the world map.
But critics point out that only a few jobs have been created so far, most of them for low-skilled workers.