Facebook is planning to build it first plant outside U.S., which will make it faster for Europeans, said officials from the social networking site on Thursday.
The green center will be powered only by renewables, and will be built in the small Swedish town Lulea, just 100 km south of the Arctic Circle.
This small town has an average of high temperatures throughout the year that do not exceed 5.0 °C, which is important to keep the servers cool.
Facebook looked at more than 100 sites in Europe, yet Lulea have Europe's cheapest electricity prices due to the numerous hydroelectric power resources.
So the location was chosen because of its cheap electricity, access to renewable energy and its very cold climate that is crucial for a better performance of the servers.
"It is our first data centre to draw its power primarily from renewables, and it features design evolutions like a 70% reduction in our reliance on backup generators", a spokesman from Facebook said.
The US datacenters owned by Facebook are currently consuming the amount of electricity that 30,000 US homes consumption.
Datacenters owned by companies like "Facebook, Google and Amazon are among the fastest growing sources of global electricity demand".
The US hosts 40% of the datacenter servers in the world, and their electricity consumption grew by almost 40% in the last couple of years.
The center will have the size of 11 football fields, covering an area of 30,000 square meters, almost fully packed with servers, and will be backed up by 14 diesel generators.
This datacenter will the largest in Europe and "the northernmost of this magnitude on earth".
Millions of Facebook's 800 million users will benefit from this center since it will handle all data processing from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"Facebook has more users outside the U.S. than inside. It was time for us to expand in Europe", said Facebook director of site operations Tom Furlong.
