Google Funnels 1 Billion Euros in Finnish Data centre To Drive AI Growth

CIOTechOutlook Team | Tuesday, 21 May 2024, 02:36 IST

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Google, a US based technology firm, will invest an additional 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in the expansion of its data center campus in Finland to fuel its artificial intelligence (AI) business growth in Europe, according to a statement.
 
Many data centres have recently been located in the Nordic countries due to the region's colder climate, tax incentives, and abundance of renewable energy.
 
Finland's Nordic neighbours, Sweden and Norway, have recently become more skeptical of hosting them, with some industry experts proposing that the Nordic countries could use their renewable energy for products such as green steel, which might result in a larger surplus value in the countries.
 
However, Finland's wind power capacity has grown so quickly in recent years, by 75% to 5,677 megawatts in 2022 alone, that prices on windy days have fallen to negative levels, according to industry statistics.As a result, there is still renewable capacity available for data centers like Google's, which purchases wind power in Finland on long-term contracts.
 
Analysts think data centers' power consumption will skyrocket due to the rapid rise of AI usage, which Google, too, mentioned as one of the reasons for its investment choice, along with its Hamina data center in Finland, which already operates on 97% carbon-free electricity.
 
"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.
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