Finland has low emissions from electricity :
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly
71 gC02eq/kwH
France, Sweden and Norway look like good places for data centres in Europe too on the basis of low electricity emissions.
A lot of the green energy is from hydro dams and you can't really add new rivers to the geography to support additional industry.
Why does it matter that homes "aren't clean" while Google is? That's silly. There's going to be the same level of demand no matter what - the same mix of coal and nuclear inputs will happen regardless of where the outflows are. It's fungible.
More demand will in time result in an increase in supply. That's a good thing. We'll be building a lot more, and it's long overdue.
If supply was just in time constructed so you maybe have only like 10-30% extra vs peak, the 50% of a nuclear power plant shifts the preexisting non-Google demand onto the non-nuclear sources as the plant can no longer meet its non-Google demand. It’s generally no different than if Google acquired that electricity from the available mix rather than the plant directly.
The thing it gives them is the ability to meet their individual net-0 targets (and thus government incentives) - a local optimization at the cost of a global net negative (at least as far as carbon electricity sources goes)
> Finland has emerged as an attractive location for data centres because of its cool climate, plentiful low-carbon electricity and relatively uncongested power grid.
- This is a plant that was going to get shut down without investment
- Finland is a rational country due to their small size and proximity to Russia, they tend to do rational things like invest in good energy infrastructure
- Finland is one of the cleanest energy markets on earth, is the country is largely a giant unpopulated forest
- Finland is not stupid and currently has the highest unemployment in Europe, this is a great win for them
- Finland will not be wearing tinfoil hats while screaming about conspiracies that data center destroying water, because they have one of the best education systems in the world
Fortum said Google's commitment would support an investment programme aimed at extending the life of the nuclear station and increasing its generating capacity."
Long-term PPAs are what you usually want because they are bankable and give you solid demand on which to expand. Which is literally what they're talking about doing.
I don't know about Finland specifically, but isn't this already the case practically everywhere?
Is that not the miracle of the free market?
King Richard II would have killed for an iPhone, PS5, air conditioning, and Uber Eats. He'd swap places with you, and he was king. You don't realize how awesome you have it.
Just a hundred years ago your ancestors were (probably) eating rotten meat and drinking unclean water.
I don't for a moment believe that, but apparently arguments that cannot possibly be proven are in vogue nowadays.
They are not. The plant may not survive beyond 2030 without this order.
It's great for marketing and, you're right, that's why they are doing it but the reason it's good for marketing is that their customers care about the environment. This is the exact invisible hand mechanism in action. It's their preferences changing the behavior of one of the biggest corporations in the world and all they can do is act like it doesn't count because they don't actually care
"The Finland deal will ensure that the Loviisa plant keeps operating beyond 2030, the companies said in a statement. Keeping it running until 2050 will require about €1 billion of investments over the years"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-09/google-gi...
api•1h ago
Not Texas and Arizona. Why?
faitswulff•1h ago
mcmcmc•55m ago
zdragnar•38m ago
Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing.
seany•1h ago
* easy permitting
* lots of space
topato•53m ago
whall6•48m ago
hn993302•18m ago
SteveNuts•5m ago
https://q.com/resources/how-qts-data-centers-use-closed-loop...
nomel•15m ago
Something like 500g/MWh for gas/coal/nuclear (~70% of power in AZ), so a huge xAI datacenter (Colossus 2, ~1 GW/h) would use ~700 MW of this type, or ~350k gallons of water an hour, which would be 0.2% of the Colorado rivers flow rate last year.
I don't know if that's significant.
whall6•49m ago
Depending on how far north you mean, you lose all or all but one of the above.
augment_me•47m ago
bsder•21m ago
Pennsylvania, for example, was one of the few places to take Walmart to task for employing illegal labor.
Texas and Arizona are notoriously anti-union and anti-resident/pro-corporation.
hn993302•16m ago