Apple Viborg data center, Central Denmark Region, Denmark

Apple's data center near Foulum, about 8 kilometers outside Viborg in central Jutland, opened in 2020 as a 6.3 billion kroner (Danish currency) project covering 166,000 square meters, the largest foreign investment ever placed in Denmark when it was announced in February 2015. It serves the App Store, Apple Music, iMessage and Siri across Europe, drawing power from two 150-kilovolt lines and backed by 14 diesel generators, with its usage matched by a solar array in Thisted and two large wind turbines near Esbjerg.

Apple promised from the start to send the site's waste heat into Viborg's district heating network, but Danish tax on surplus heat made the deal uneconomic for years. That changed after the government abolished the price ceiling on surplus heat on January 17, 2025; the district heating company, Viborg Varme, had already approved a 266 million kroner plan in April 2024 to build an energy hub of heat exchangers and pumps at Foulum with a 4.5-kilometer line into the city. Chairman Kristian Brøns Nielsen said the plan could cut the bill for an ordinary detached house by 3,000 to 4,000 kroner a year.

Construction of the heat hub began in early 2026, with the first stage, about 12 megawatts of heat, due in the first half of 2027; the line is sized for as much as 69 megawatts, and Viborg Varme expects the project to cover at least half the city's heating. In July 2025 Apple confirmed a further expansion at Foulum without saying how large, and Mayor Ulrik Wilbek said the extra heat would feed the network.

Neighbors complained to the Viborg Folkeblad in November 2018 about light and noise from the site during construction. A decade after the announcement, the center employs about 80 people, and former mayor Torsten Nielsen admitted the jobs had fallen short of what he had talked about, calling it a steep learning curve.