Data-center law in Denmark

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-06

Denmark has no data-center-specific siting, permitting or utility statute; a data center is sited and permitted under the general planning, environmental and grid-connection framework that applies to any large facility, and that general framework is not independently described here.

Denmark's one identified data-center-specific instrument is a tax benefit rather than a permitting duty: Elafgiftsloven section 11 lets a VAT-registered business obtain a full refund of the electricity tax on electricity it consumes for production purposes, and Skatteraadet, the Tax Council, has confirmed in binding rulings that a business running its own IT equipment at a third-party data-center provider is the consumer of that electricity for this purpose and can claim the refund, including electricity tax the data-center provider has passed through since 1 January 2017.

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Instruments on record

1 instrument on record, grouped by the family of approval each one governs.

Public agreements

What fiscal agreements attach a data center to its host jurisdiction?

Elafgiftsloven Section 11, Electricity Tax Refund for Data Processing Equipment

In force

Elafgiftsloven (lov om afgift af elektricitet), section 11, stk. 1, nr. 1

Applies to private

A business registered under the Danish VAT Act can obtain a refund of the tax on electricity it consumes for production purposes ('procesformaal'), under Elafgiftsloven section 11, stk. 1, nr. 1, subject to the exclusions in stk. 2.

Skatteraadet, the Danish Tax Council, has confirmed in a binding ruling (SKM2018.250.SR) that a business is the consumer, for this purpose, of the electricity used by its own IT equipment even where that equipment is physically located at a third-party data-center provider, so the business can claim the refund on electricity tax the data-center provider has passed through to it, including for periods from 1 January 2017.

Skatteraadet has separately held (SKM2016.527.SR, restated in SKM2016.571.SKAT) that the data-center provider itself is not the consumer of the electricity its customers' servers draw, so the provider cannot claim the refund on that portion.

Source: Full text of law

Every entry cites the instrument it describes. None of it is legal advice: verify a citation before relying on it. Full sourcing: read the methodology. The rest of the record: all jurisdictions.