Finland’s regulator halts Google’s preparatory work for data centers — Fortune
Finland’s licensing and supervisory authority has ordered Google subsidiary Tuike Finland to suspend all environmentally significant preparatory work at the sites of future data centers in Muhos and Kajaani. The work must remain suspended until the necessary environmental impact assessment procedure for the projects is completed, Fortune reports.
Work before environmental assessment
According to The Guardian, as cited by Fortune, the decision was preceded by the felling of an estimated 250,000 trees in Muhos. The regulator stated that extensive preparatory work had already been carried out at the project sites: trees were felled, topsoil was removed, roads and material storage areas were built, drainage ditches and culverts were modified, and a stormwater drainage system was installed.
In the agency’s view, these actions alter the environment and create consequences whose identification and assessment are a key purpose of the environmental impact assessment procedure. At the same time, the restriction does not apply to planning, measurements, soil studies, and other work with minor and easily reversible impacts.
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Investment and public initiative
The sites in Muhos and Kajaani are part of Google’s €13 billion investment in Finnish artificial intelligence infrastructure announced in September. The company called the project the largest single investment in Europe. Google already has a data center in the Finnish city of Hamina, opened in 2011 on the site of a former paper mill.
More than 96,000 people signed a public initiative calling for tighter oversight of data centers. Its authors propose introducing a special levy for data centers and monitoring their operations to ensure they do not threaten the reliability of electricity supply or negatively affect electricity prices and availability for consumers and other industries. Google did not provide Fortune with a comment in response to the publication’s request.
