Published 2026-09-23 · Event 2026-03-25

How Sweden’s new procurement criteria ask public buyers to measure data-center services

In March 2026 the National Agency for Public Procurement published new support and sustainability criteria for data-center services. It offers a baseline and a more ambitious level covering efficiency, energy, resource use and reporting. The suggested values are tools for buyers to adapt to a specific procurement, not new statutory limits for every Swedish data center.

A public authority that buys compute rarely buys a server hall. It buys a service: applications available to staff, storage that keeps records, processing that supports permits or health care, and a contract that must still work when a system is under strain. Behind that service sit racks, cooling, power and choices about where data is processed. In March 2026, Sweden’s National Agency for Public Procurement issued new guidance and sustainability criteria intended to help public buyers bring those physical choices into the tender.

The authority frames the criteria as support for procurement, not a general building rule. It offers a basic package and a more ambitious package, both of which buyers should tailor after analysing need and market conditions. The criteria can cover energy-efficient operation, renewable or fossil-free energy claims, equipment reuse and recycling, and the ability to support a more flexible electricity system. They are useful because a tender can ask for evidence that a glossy supplier promise normally leaves out.

The technical entry point is PUE, the ratio between a data centre’s total annual electricity use and the annual electricity used by its IT equipment. The basic criterion proposes measured PUE no higher than 1.4, with alternative combinations that allow a supplier to demonstrate water-use efficiency or heat reuse instead. For a facility that has not entered operation, it proposes design PUE no higher than 1.25 at full load. The more ambitious option lowers the measured PUE proposal to 1.3, with stronger alternative WUE or ERF combinations, and a design target of 1.2 at full load.

Those numbers need the rest of the sentence around them. The authority’s own page labels them as proposals for the purchasing organisation to adapt. A buyer decides which level is proportionate to the service, site and market response, and can set another well-justified threshold. The values are not Swedish law, a universal operator ranking or proof that every hall above a proposed figure is inefficient. In a tender, publish the selected value, the reason for it and the evidence bidders must supply so that competing offers are compared on the same basis.

System boundary is where the comparison can quietly break. The criteria say PUE should cover the whole data centre while excluding offices and unrelated activity. They ask providers to state their calculation, the boundary used and the period measured, and to report the relevant values annually or on request. For new facilities, a design estimate must be labelled as design rather than reported as measured operation. A number without a period or boundary is not a usable service comparison.

The page reaches beyond a single efficiency score. For the service capacity used in a procurement, a buyer can ask for total electricity use in MWh and for evidence behind renewable-electricity claims, such as guarantees of origin, a power-purchase agreement or generation by the supplier. It also provides criteria about keeping equipment in use longer, preparing retired hardware for reuse, repairing it where practical, recycling what cannot be reused and handling hazardous waste. At the more ambitious level, it includes annual reporting of PUE, WUE, Energy Reuse Factor and Renewable Energy Factor, as well as options to assess life-cycle climate impact and improvements during the contract.

For a procurement team, the sequence matters more than pasting every clause into a document. Begin with the service and workload: availability, performance, storage, security and expected growth. Then decide which data-centre impacts the buyer can influence. Ask suppliers how they attribute the service’s energy to a facility or group of facilities, how a site change is disclosed, and whether the figures are measured or designed. Consult the authority’s web support and market dialogue before choosing a threshold. Those steps reduce the risk of demanding an unverified score that rules out good offers without changing real-world outcomes.

A carbon or renewable-electricity claim is not the same thing as efficiency. A supplier may contract renewable electricity while using more energy per unit of IT work; it may report a low PUE without offering a low-carbon compute service for the workload being bought. Heat-reuse capability is not proof that heat is actually delivered to a buyer or district-heating network. The criteria help keep those measures separate and encourage the procuring body to ask which number is attached to its contracted service rather than an entire provider portfolio.

The wider importance is practical. Swedish authorities, regions and municipalities increasingly depend on cloud and data-centre services, yet their tenders can make resource reporting invisible unless the contract asks for it. A well-written requirement gives suppliers room to compete on credible improvements and gives the buyer a route to check performance after award. It can also make long-term energy and reuse claims part of contract management instead of a one-page environmental promise at selection time.

There are still boundaries. The guidance does not make a public procurement criterion a permit for the facility behind the service, reserve network capacity, guarantee renewable electricity at every hour or independently audit a supplier’s data. Buyers need to apply procurement law, protect security and service continuity, and decide what verification is proportionate. The authority provides a new framework and suggested thresholds. The purchaser must turn it into a transparent, service-specific contract with a measurable reporting duty.

Why it matters

The guidance gives Swedish public buyers a new way to ask what energy, water, heat-reuse and equipment claims mean for the actual data-center service in their contract.

What remains unknown

The new criteria do not show how many Swedish procuring organisations will adopt them, which thresholds a particular tender should use or whether suppliers’ future reports will be independently verified.

Sources