Data-center law in Iceland

Skipulagslög nr. 123/2010 (Planning Act), 13.-16. gr. og 55.-56. gr.

Effective 2011-01-01 · Applies to both

The Planning Act requires a development consent (framkvæmdaleyfi) from the municipal planning authority for a project that is not itself building-permit work, including construction of infrastructure such as a large industrial facility, and the consent must conform to the municipality's adopted spatial plan.

A municipality supervises compliance with an issued consent, and may impose daily fines, recoverable by distraint, on the holder of a permit-required project that has stood halted for one year. A violation of the Act or of a regulation made under it is punishable, separately from the daily-fine mechanism, by fines or imprisonment of up to two years unless a heavier penalty applies under other law.

The Act names no data-centre-specific category or threshold; a data centre is permitted, or not, on the same terms as any other development requiring a consent.

Source: Full text of law

Lög um umhverfismat framkvæmda og áætlana nr. 111/2021 (EIA Act), 18. gr. og 1. viðauki

Effective 2021-09-01 · Applies to both

A project listed in Category A of Annex 1 is always subject to environmental impact assessment; a project listed in Category B is subject to assessment when it is judged likely to have significant environmental effects because of its scope, nature, or location, applying the criteria of Annex 2.

Annex 1's thirteen numbered categories run from agriculture, forestry and aquaculture through extraction of underground resources, the energy industry, metal production and processing, the mineral industry, the chemical industry, the food industry, the textile, leather, wood and paper industries, the rubber industry, infrastructure, other projects, tourism and recreation, and amendments to a listed project, and none names a data centre.

Within the infrastructure category, item 10.01 sets a 20,000-square-metre project-area or building-floor-area threshold for an "iðnaðarframkvæmd" (industrial development) generally, without naming a sector, which reaches a sufficiently large data centre on the same generic terms as any other industrial building. A neighbouring item, 10.02, sets the same 20,000-square-metre threshold for a shopping centre, parking, a sports stadium, a university, a hospital, and "comparable construction."

Whether item 10.01 sits in Category A (always assessed) or Category B (screened for significant effects) is not resolved by the extracted annex text, which prints the category marker without a reliably associated column position; whether a data centre's own power supply infrastructure or connecting transmission line separately triggers a Category A or B energy-sector threshold turns on the facility's specific power source and remains unresolved in the record reviewed.

Source: Full text of law

Raforkulög nr. 65/2003 (Electricity Act), 3. gr. tölul. 26 og 9. gr.

Effective 2003-07-01 · Applies to both

The transmission company's operation of the transmission system includes connecting everyone who applies for it, provided they meet the technical conditions and pay the connection fee under the company's tariff; the same non-discriminatory duty runs to a distribution company for connection to the distribution network.

The Act defines a "large consumer" (stórnotandi) as a user who uses at least 80 GWh per year at one location within a three-year period, a threshold a data centre's own electricity demand can meet, and a large consumer's connection and tariff terms are set within this general framework rather than under a separate data-centre-specific regime.

The energy regulator may impose administrative fines of up to 10 percent of a company's turnover for a violation including the transmission company's connection and system-operation duties. The Act took effect immediately on its own publication but came into implementation on 1 July 2003.

Source: Full text of law

Lög um mannvirki nr. 160/2010 (Buildings Act), 9. gr. og 57. gr. a

Effective 2011-01-01 · Applies to both

The Buildings Act requires a building permit (byggingarleyfi) before construction of a building-permit-liable structure begins, together with staged inspections culminating in a safety inspection before the structure is occupied and a final inspection within three years of occupancy.

A building official may impose administrative fines on a person who carries out building-permit-liable construction without first obtaining a permit, who occupies a structure without a safety-inspection certificate, or who fails to obtain a final-inspection certificate; the amount of the fine is left to a regulation the minister issues rather than stated as a figure in the Act itself.

The Act names no data-centre-specific category; a data centre's building shell and equipment rooms are permitted, inspected, and fined for non-compliance on the same terms as any other building-permit-liable structure.

Source: Full text of law