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Finnish regulators have ordered a halt to work at two planned Google data centers after more than 300 hectares of forest were cleared before mandatory environmental impact assessments were completed, the BBC reported. The order covers the company's project sites in Muhos and Kajaani, both in the north of the country. It lands less than a month after Google announced a €13 billion buildout in Finland, which it describes as its largest single investment in Europe.
The stop order
High-resolution editorial photo related to Google's data center developments and environmental oversight in Finland.
Finland's Licensing and Supervision Agency, known as LVV, has been investigating whether Tuike Finland Oy, Google's local project company, razed the forest without the required assessments. The agency gave Tuike Finland until October 14 to explain its conduct and detail how it intends to proceed, and said it may open enforcement proceedings if the company fails to comply, Le Monde reported. Work that would significantly alter the environment must be suspended by October 23. Tommi Muilu, head of the LVV's environment department, said trees have been removed, topsoil stripped, site roads and storage areas built, and ditches altered.
The clearing came first. The environmental paperwork did not.
The agency first demanded reports on the projects and their permits from the municipality of Muhos, the city of Kajaani, and Tuike Finland on September 18, after the national conservation association said it suspected illegal logging, DCD reported.
What Google says
Google said it had acted in good faith under the Forestry Act, had carried out nature surveys, and had put protections in place for areas of high environmental value.
"As we continue our long-term work in the region, we are advancing our landscaping and biodiversity plans, which include tree planting across 130 hectares at Muhos," the company said.
The conservation group that triggered the review rejects that account. Satellite images show four separate sites cleared for the two projects, according to Finnish newspaper Kaleva, and the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation says protected nature sites were among the logged areas. "Either this is gross incompetence from Google's Finnish project company, Tuike Finland Oy, or gross disregard for Finnish legislation, or at worst both," said Hanna Halmeenpää, the association's chair, who filed the suspension request in September, Futurism reported.
A €13 billion program
The scrutiny lands on the centerpiece of Google's European growth plans. The €13 billion ($15.1 billion) commitment covers 2027 and 2028 and spans data centers and supporting infrastructure in Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala, alongside clean energy projects and a €31 million community fund.
Google has operated in Finland since 2009, when it converted a former Stora Enso paper mill in Hamina into a data center cooled with seawater from the Gulf of Finland. Baxtel lists the Hamina campus as the country's largest data center at 140 MW operational, with another 30 MW under construction. The company's newer land positions are much larger: 1,400 hectares across Kajaani and Muhos, bought from state forest agency Metsähallitus in 2024, plus another 900 hectares in Vaala acquired this February.
Finland's building boom
The country has drawn a wave of data center development. Baxtel tracks 139 Finnish facilities operated by 58 providers, and the pipeline keeps growing: Applied Digital plans a 1 GW campus in the country, its first outside the United States, and atNorth is developing a 75 MW first phase in Salo.
Why it matters
This is the first major regulatory reversal for a hyperscaler in the Nordics, a region that sells itself to AI developers on speed: cheap power, cool air, and cooperative towns. If the assessment process forces redesigns or delays at Muhos and Kajaani, the 2027 to 2028 capacity Google is counting on for Gemini and its cloud customers slips with it. A program billed as the company's biggest single European investment now has a permitting problem.
Directly illustrates the forest clearing incident at Google's Finnish data center development site.
Rival developers will read the lesson plainly: at thousand-hectare scale, the environmental paperwork has to run ahead of the clearing crews. Finland's conservation groups, freshly encouraged, will be watching the next tree line.
