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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.
Finland's Nordic neighbors Sweden and Norway have recently grown
increasingly critical of hosting them, with some industry
experts arguing the Nordic countries should use their renewable
power for products such as green steel that could leave higher
surplus value in the countries.
But Finland's wind power capacity has increased so rapidly in
recent years, by 75% 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.
Analysts believe data centers' power consumption is set to
massively increase due to the rapid growth in AI usage, which
Google, too, cited for one of the reasons behind its investment
decision, alongside its Hamina data center in Finland already
operating with 97% carbon-free energy.
"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.
($1 = 0.9225 euros)
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Emelia
Sithole-Matarise)
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