Eurus Energy and Toyota Tsusho Break Ground on Wind-Powered Data Center in Hokkaido

Japan’s growing data center industry is taking a major step toward decarbonization as renewable energy developer Eurus Energy and trading giant Toyota Tsusho broke ground o

n a wind-powered data center in northern Hokkaido. The facility, called Soya Green Data Center 1, is the first in Japan to be directly connected to wind power via a private transmission line, marking a milestone in efforts to decouple data center growth from fossil fuels.

A pillar-raising ceremony was held this week following the start of construction in April 2026. The data center sits adjacent to Eurus Energy’s Kobaoko Wind Farm in Wakkanai, Hokkaido’s northernmost city, and will draw electricity directly from the 42MW wind farm through a dedicated private line. The one-story building is designed with earthquake resistance in mind and occupies a 9,900-square-meter (approximately 106,562 square feet) site. It will have a receiving capacity of roughly 3MW and is slated to become operational during Japan’s fiscal year 2027, which ends in March 2028.

The partnership assigns Toyota Tsusho responsibility for operating the data center services, while Eurus Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho, manages the land, construction, and energy supply. To ensure stable power even when wind conditions fluctuate, the companies plan to implement a mechanism to procure additional renewable energy when the wind farm’s output falls short. This setup is designed to address the intermittent nature of wind generation while maintaining data center uptime.

The project is part of a broader push by Japan to decentralize its data center footprint, which remains heavily concentrated in the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas. Industry observers have warned that this concentration creates risks of uneven power loads and business continuity vulnerabilities in the event of a natural disaster. Soya Green Data Center 1 is located in the Soya region, which benefits from strong and consistent wind conditions — a resource Toyota Tsusho has already tapped through ten operational wind farms totaling 525.5MW in the area. However, the region historically lacks local electricity demand and has limited transmission grid capacity to export wind power. By co-locating a data center with the wind farm, the companies are turning a geographic mismatch into an opportunity: using on-site renewable energy to power computing loads without straining the grid.

Looking ahead, Toyota Tsusho and Eurus Energy are evaluating a potential second-phase data center with a capacity of 10–20MW, possibly targeting a 2030 timeline. This could be the first step toward building a large-scale data center cluster in the region, leveraging the area’s renewable energy potential to attract more digital infrastructure investment. The Soya Green Data Center 1 thus serves as a proof of concept for how Japan can match its renewable energy generation with fast-growing data center demand, especially as hyperscale and AI workloads push power requirements higher.