Facing widespread public opposition to the prospect of large, noisy and extremely power-hungry data centers springing up all over the place, Google and its Big Tech competitors have deployed the PR pros to tell the world: “Hey, we get it.”
“Early public consultation is increasingly a very important part of the process,” Devi Thomas, Google’s global head of community development and engagement, told the Associated Press this week. “We have done as much as we can to make sure communities are involved early on.”
Someone might want to pass that message to Devi’s colleagues in Finland, where the tech giant has been forced to halt work on two planned data centers after cutting down some 1,300 acres of forest before completing mandatory environmental assessments.
In September, Donald Trump aired his frustrations over Google’s investments in Finland over Truth Social, railing against calls for regulation on AI and data center expansion. It took a month for Google to deliver a compelling demonstration of why some of those pesky regulations exist in the first place.
Par For The Course
The debacle unfolding in Finland’s forests demonstrates exactly why so many Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of one of these facilities being built in their backyard.
In September, Google announced a €13 billion ($15 billion) investment in Finnish digital infrastructure, promising thousands of jobs, environmental restoration, and economic growth. In a press release, the company specifically hailed its operations in Finland as a model for “responsibly building AI infrastructure.”
But in the municipalities of Muhos and Otanmäki, Google’s subsidiary had already felled hundreds of hectares of woodland, uprooting an estimated 400,000 trees. The topsoil was removed, roads were constructed and drainage channels were bored. Vast, muddy expanses of exposed earth now lie where pristine forests once stood.
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Then on Thursday, regulators reported that roughly five miles of drainage ditches at Muhos had already been dug without the required advance notification, and referred the project to the police for inspection amid concerns over excess metals being released into nearby waterways.
Finland’s Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) had already ordered Google to halt further work in early October until all the necessary environmental assessments were finished. But what good is an environmental review if a company with such extraordinary wealth, power and will has already stripped away the environment it was supposed to assess?
Our Bad, I Guess
Facing public scrutiny by Finnish authorities and the press, Google’s country director Antti Järvinen delivered a statement in which he said officials were fully aware of the company’s activities, but said Google “takes full responsibility for what has happened.”
“All decisions were made based on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time,” he told the Finnish media. “I am extremely sorry that we are in this situation. I want to apologize for that.”
A Google spokesperson told Newsweek, “We have operated in Finland for 15 years and have always worked to meet or exceed zoning, environmental, health, and safety requirements. After receiving the LVV letters on 6 October, we stopped preparatory works at Muhos and Kajaani and have submitted a formal response to LVV confirming this. We look forward to maintaining an active, open dialogue with all authorities to strengthen our partnership with Finland and local organizations.”
The company is now waiting for the LVV’s verdict before construction continues, and says it will plant new trees across 130 hectares of land in the meantime. Whether the Finnish public will consider that anything other than a token gesture before the tech behemoth goes ahead as planned is another matter.
Then there’s the question of electricity, of which any data center in Finland and beyond needs a lot to function.
To power its expanding Finnish operations, Google signed a 22-year deal with Fortum to buy up to half the output of the Loviisa nuclear power plant, which generates around 10 percent of Finland’s electricity.
The agreement should help keep the plant operating until 2050—a genuine benefit—but the scale of Google’s energy demands raises obvious questions about the national grid and whether consumers will ultimately pick up some of the bill.
Such concerns sound remarkably similar to those expressed by Minnesotans. Google’s proposed Pine Island data center could leave ordinary electricity customers facing roughly $1 billion in net costs, according to the state attorney general’s office. The utility company claims it would deliver $1.1 billion in net benefits. Sounds like the kind of disagreement that should be settled before the lights turn on, not after.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted last month found that 60 percent of Americans would be uncomfortable with a new data center operating in their area. Fifty-four percent think the facilities are mostly bad for the environment, and half believe they’re bad for household energy costs.
Is it really any wonder?
Trust Is Earned
Trump has a point about red tape. Excessive bureaucracy can smother investment and delay projects that would benefit businesses and communities alike, and there’s plenty of it worth cutting.
The AI revolution isn’t going away, either. America should absolutely seek to lead it, and its companies deserve support in developing the infrastructure that will underpin economic growth and the digital transformation that awaits.
But we’re not talking about a local housing development skirting a local planning permission process or your neighbor building an outhouse in his back garden without permission. These are gigantic industrial developments that can fundamentally reshape communities, consume extraordinary quantities of electricity and water, and permanently alter the environment.
Requiring a company with the resources of Google or its rivals to complete a comprehensive assessment and proper consultation before sending in the earth movers is hardly unreasonable. Nor should the enormous wealth of such companies allow them to treat compliance as a mere inconvenience to be settled with a “sorry” and a payout.
Americans aren’t wrong to distrust data centers, and they aren’t irrational Luddites for questioning projects that could profoundly affect their bank accounts, communities and way of life. When the pigheaded pursuit of technological progress becomes more destructive than the benefits it promises, something has gone badly wrong.
If Google wants people to trust its promises of responsible development, it might at least complete the necessary paperwork before its bulldozers arrive.