Finland orders Google to halt two data centers over missing environmental impact assessment

Finnish authorities have ordered Google to halt construction work on two data centers the company is developing in Finland, barely a month after the tech giant announced a $15 billion investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the country. The Finnish Licensing and Supervisory Agency (LVV, by its Finnish acronym) notified Tuike Finland Oy, Google's local subsidiary, on Tuesday that it must suspend work on the projects planned in the towns of Muhos and Kajaani until the relevant environmental impact assessments are completed.

The suspension order, which must take effect by October 23 at the latest, specifically affects activities such as felling trees, removing topsoil, excavation, quarrying, crushing materials, earthmoving, trenching, and building roads and storage areas. It does not, however, apply to planning, surveying, soil studies or other lower-impact activities that can easily be reversed.

Tommi Muilu, head of the LVV's environmental department, justified the measure by noting that the activities in question "will change the environment and cause impacts whose identification and assessment are precisely one of the key objectives of the environmental impact assessment procedure".

A Google spokesperson acknowledged the problem and said the company would follow the Finnish agency's instructions: "We understand the concerns and in this case we have not lived up to our own standards", they told the broadcaster that published the information. The spokesperson added that the company "acted in good faith under the Forest Act", that it carried out nature surveys and that it put in place measures to protect areas of high ecological value. According to the company, its landscaping and biodiversity plans are moving forward and include planting trees across 130 hectares (320 acres) in Muhos.

The episode comes at a time when Finland has become one of big tech's preferred destinations for building data centers driven by the artificial intelligence boom, thanks to the availability of land and energy, an increasingly scarce resource across much of Europe. In recent months several data center projects with potential capacities of hundreds of megawatts have been announced in the country, leading the Nordic nation to be dubbed the "Texas of Europe", a reference to the U.S. state that has become one of the world's main hubs for this infrastructure, with major projects from companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft and Anthropic.

The $15 billion investment Google announced for Finland is its largest bet in Europe to date. As the company itself explained at the time, that capital will go toward building data centers through 2028 and toward complementary investments, such as the energy projects needed to supply those facilities.

The case highlights the growing tensions between the accelerated expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure and environmental regulatory frameworks in Europe, at a time when major cloud providers are competing to secure land and electricity supply to sustain the growth in compute demand that AI requires.