Alphabet-owned Google will invest a further EUR1 billion ($1.1 billion) into the expansion of its data center campus in Finland to drive its artificial intelligence (AI) business growth in Europe, it said in a statement.
In recent years, many data centers have been located in the Nordic countries because of the region’s cooler climate, tax breaks, and abundant availability of renewable power. However, some of Finland’s Nordic neighbors, such as Sweden and Norway, have grown increasingly critical of hosting them, with some industry experts arguing that the Nordic countries should use their renewable power for products such as green steel that could leave higher surplus value in the countries.
Renewable power availability in Finland
Finland’s wind power capacity has increased so rapidly in recent years, by 75 percent to 5,677 megawatts in 2022 alone, that on windy days prices have plummeted to negative, industry statistics showed. Therefore, there is still renewable capacity available for data centers such as Google’s, which acquires wind power in Finland under long-term contracts.
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Sustainable data center operations
“Heat coming out of our Finnish data center will be re-routed to the district heating network in nearby Hamina, covering local households, schools, and public service buildings,” Google said in the statement. It added that it aimed to achieve net zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030.
In addition to its Finnish investment, the search and cloud giant announced last month it would build new data centers in the Netherlands and Belgium.
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