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Embodied carbon · Nordic datacenters
A datacenter is
thousands of pieces.
We count all of them.
Sirvo starts from your drawings and models — not from a quantity list you have to produce first. You get a carbon number you can defend, traceable down to the individual element.
9 assessments · 2 Nordic operators · Sweden, Finland, Iceland
The blocker is the quantities
A datacenter build is thousands of components from dozens of suppliers: structure, envelope, cooling, power distribution, cabling, batteries. Somewhere in there is the embodied carbon of the whole facility.
Most assessments stall before they begin, because someone has to go through the model and count everything first — and that job usually lands back on the client. It is slow, it is nobody's actual job, and it is the reason carbon studies get postponed.
Sirvo does the take-off instead. Quantities are extracted from whatever exists: the IFC model, the drawings, the specifications, or a walk through the site.
You don't have to produce a quantity list. Producing it is the work.
How the analysis runs
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01
Start from what exists
The IFC model, the drawings, the specifications, a site visit — whatever you have. The facility and its systems are split into individually assessable components: the beam, the wall build-up, the cooling unit, the cable run.
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02
Do the take-off
Every component is counted and given a quantity in its own honest unit: metres, square metres, cubic metres, kilograms, units, kilowatts. This is the part your team does not have to do.
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03
Attach the carbon
Materials and products are matched to environmental data — specific manufacturer declarations where they exist, representative data where they don't — and quantified across lifecycle stages A1–A3, A4 and A5.
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04
Put it back together
The pieces are reassembled into results that answer real questions: what dominates, what is worth changing, and what the alternatives would cost in carbon.
Every figure on the summary sheet traces back to a single object in your model. When a reviewer, an auditor or a client asks where a number came from, there is an answer — not an estimate.
What you get
Total embodied carbon
One headline figure for the facility, with the assumptions behind it written down rather than buried.
Breakdown by material
Steel, concrete, wood, and the rest — so procurement conversations start from evidence.
Breakdown by category
Structure, envelope, equipment, infrastructure conduits. Where the carbon actually sits.
Breakdown by lifecycle stage
Production, transport and construction separated, so responsibility is clear.
Comparisons
Design options and material substitutions assessed on the same basis, without rerunning the whole model.
A model you keep
The structure is reusable for the next site, not a one-off report that ages on a shelf.
Carbon is the core. The method goes further.
Embodied carbon is where Sirvo is strongest, and where most projects start. But the demanding part of an assessment is not the carbon — it is building the inventory: every component, quantity and material, extracted from the model rather than requested from you.
Once that inventory exists, extending it costs a fraction of what it cost to build. The same model supports a full life cycle assessment structured to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, and impact categories beyond global warming potential.
For buildings, results are reported following EN 15978, using product data declared to EN 15804 — the framework most Nordic tenders are written against.
ISO 14040 · ISO 14044 · EN 15978 · EN 15804
Full life cycle assessment
Goal and scope, inventory, impact assessment and interpretation, following the ISO 14040 / 14044 framework.
Water depletion potential
Water use and depletion — the question that increasingly follows the carbon question in Nordic datacenters.
Further impact categories
Acidification, eutrophication, ozone depletion, primary energy demand — run from the same inventory.
Energy analysis
Building energy performance and on-site generation, covering the operational side of the same facility.
Track record
Nine embodied-carbon assessments delivered for two Nordic datacenter operators, covering sites in Sweden, Finland and Iceland — across different climates, grid contexts and construction methods.
Client names available on request.
Who does the work
Sirvo AB is run by Santiago Valencia, a doctoral researcher in energy and built-environment systems in Sweden, working on life cycle assessment, photovoltaics and building energy performance.
The work is analytical rather than advisory: the value is in getting the numbers right and then saying, in plain language, what they mean.
Availability
Q3 2026 One assessment slot open · booking for Q4
Sirvo runs one to two assessments per quarter. A full assessment takes roughly a quarter from kick-off, and the same analyst carries it from the first model to the final sheet — which is why the traceability holds, and why the capacity is what it is.
Work is normally booked a quarter ahead. If you have a fixed reporting deadline, say so in the first message and it will be answered honestly.
Start a conversation
You don't need quantities, a model export, or a prepared dataset to start. Send a short description of the project and the stage it's at, and what material exists.
svg@sirvo.se +46 73 742 24 16 LinkedIn — Sirvo AB LinkedIn — Santiago Valencia