Data Centres and the Nordic Grid: Who Gets Power Next?

Episode summary 

Data centre demand is growing faster than the Nordic grid can be built, and faster than most forecasts expected even a year ago. Volue's own Long Term Power (LTP) report has nearly doubled its 2030 estimate for the region since the June LTP 2025. 

In this conversation, Volue brings together three sides of the data-centre energy debate: politics, industry and the grid.  

• Lars Haltbrekken, deputy leader of Norway’s Socialist Left Party, argues for national control over who builds data centres and where.  
• Bård Standal, representing the Norwegian Data Center Industry, makes the case that Europe cannot afford to fall further behind in global compute.  
• Martha Marie Øberg, who leads Market Design & System Utilization at Statnett, has to make the Nordic grid work regardless of how that argument ends. 

The conversation moves from 1906 hydropower concession law to millisecond-scale AI load, and lands on the open question nobody on the panel could fully answer: what happens when a limited grid meets unlimited global demand. 

What you'll hear 

• Why Denmark pausing new grid connections in March 2026 might be a preview for the rest of the Nordics 
• The case for a national data centre permitting system, and why Norway's Storting has so far rejected it 
• Why non-firm grid agreements help Statnett, but do not necessarily give flexibility back to the market 
• What an AI load that swings in milliseconds does to a market built around 15-minute intervals 
• Where Bård Standal, Lars Haltbrekken and Martha Marie Øberg actually agree and disagree