Thanks to Joshua Hong and Fortune Magazine Online for the Headline
Google has built a good relationship with Finland who have welcomed them with open arms for the last ten years as a site for their Data Centres. Must be the bears , and the fish and the cold.
Google have invested a unbelievable amount of money already and have a fully operational data centre in the town of Hamina in Finland.
Unfortunately the environmental impact of cutting 250,000 trees without the complete assessment of the impact on the surrounding area has caused a rift in the relationship and Google have been asked to suspend their preparatory work in Muhos and Kajaani.
Removal of trees, stripping of topsoil, construction of site roads and storage areas, changes to ditches and culverts and storm water arrangements have now been put on hold. Though Google can still continue with work that can be easily reversed.
Google on the other hand says the work they are doing is helping the environment , their site at Hamima which is a former paper-mill, uses cooling water from the Gulf of Finland and then recycles the sites waste water to local homes and businesses and that heat recovery will cover up to 80% of Hamima’s district heating network’s annual demand.
The environmentalists say that the Irish model of regulating grid access for those running large data centres is necessary due to the possiblity that data centre consumption could cause energy price increases and affect availablity of energy to the normal everyday consumer.
Google has forseen this by signing a 22 year agreement to help extend the life of the Loviisa nuclear plant which is supplies about 10% of Finland’s electricity.
There are big players in the rush to secure data centre locations to enable hyperscale cloud providers. The top three are Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Just so you know.
Namaste and Thank You for Reading.🙏
