Google plans to invest one billion euros in constructing a primary data center in Finland, aiming to boost the growth of artificial intelligence in Europe.
The company stated that the expansion will increase the number of employees by 25% to 500 people this year and next year.
Google has kept the impact of the investment on the data center’s capacity at the location confidential.
In recent years, many companies have established data centers in Northern European countries due to the cold climate in that region, tax incentives, and the availability of renewable energy to a large extent.
The new facility is located in Hamina in the south of the country, with good access to renewable energy in the area.
This is crucial to achieving Google’s goal of running every office and data center on green energy by the end of this decade.
Google is also working on a project with local authorities to redirect the heat generated from their data center in Finland to the local heating network covering homes, schools, and public buildings.
Finland has recently criticized its northern neighbors Sweden and Norway for hosting them, as some industry experts believe that Nordic countries should utilize their renewable energy to produce products like green steel.
Industry statistics show that wind energy in Finland has significantly increased in recent years, rising by 75% in 2022 alone, with prices reaching negative levels during stormy days.
Analysts believe that energy consumption in data centers is expected to rise due to the rapid growth in the use of artificial intelligence.
Google cited this as one of the reasons behind its investment decision, in addition to the Hamina data center in Finland being 97% carbon neutral.
Ben Townend, Google’s Global Head of Infrastructure Strategy and Sustainability, mentioned that this plan aims to guide future investments.
He suggested: “You can begin directing new site selection opportunities towards locations where waste heat can easily be recovered and used for area heating.”
The pilot project provides recovered thermal energy for free to Haminan Energia Oy.
It is noted that Google is not the first tech company in the Nordics offering its services to local energy companies.
Microsoft joined Finnish utility company Fortum Oyj in 2022 to aggregate and distribute the energy source to the local grid. Stockholm also uses heat from data centers for similar purposes.
In addition to the Finnish investments, the company announced plans last month to build new data centers in the Netherlands and Belgium.
