Finnish regulators have ordered Google to stop most preparatory construction work at two planned data center sites after hundreds of hectares of forest were cleared while mandatory environmental reviews were still underway.
Finland’s Licensing and Supervision Agency, known as LVV, issued the order Tuesday to Tuike Finland Oy, a Google subsidiary developing projects in Muhos and Kajaani.
The directive calls for activities that significantly alter the environment to stop immediately or no later than Oct. 23 and remain suspended until the environmental impact assessment procedures for the projects are completed.
The restrictions cover tree removal, stripping of topsoil, excavation, quarrying and crushing, movement of soil, ditching and construction of roads and storage areas.
Planning, measurements, soil studies and other work considered minor or easily reversible may continue.
“In our opinion, the measures in question will change the environment and cause impacts, the identification and assessment of which are among the key objectives of the EIA procedure,” Tommi Muilu, head of LVV’s environmental department, said.
The order follows months of work at the sites.
Google began forest clearing in Muhos and Kajaani in March, before making a final investment decision on the projects. The company described the activity at the time as preparatory work.
At Muhos, approximately 330 hectares of forest have since been cleared, according to Kaleva, an area substantially larger than the 200-hectare threshold at which Finnish law requires an environmental impact assessment when forest is being permanently removed.
Groundwork at the site has also included topsoil removal, roads, ditches, culverts and stormwater retention structures.
Earlier reporting had placed the clearing at more than 300 hectares, an area commonly compared with roughly 500 football fields.
The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation raised concerns in September about the work at both Muhos and Kajaani and asked regulators to intervene.
The organization alleged that potentially unlawful clearing had occurred before completion of the environmental assessment process. LVV subsequently opened an investigation.
Google has not challenged the regulator’s latest direction.
“We understand the concerns and have fallen short of our own high standards in this instance,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC.
The company nevertheless said it believed it had acted lawfully when beginning the work.
“We acted in good faith under the Forestry Act, and ran nature surveys and put in place measures to protect high-value areas,” the spokesperson said.
Google said it would comply with the suspension while continuing activities that do not conflict with LVV’s order.
The company has also said that environmental surveys covering the full project areas were conducted as part of the planning and environmental-review processes.
Google maintains that it intends to restore or landscape portions of the affected land.
“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 dispute centers on the sequencing of the work.
Environmental impact assessments are intended to identify significant ecological effects before irreversible or difficult-to-reverse changes occur.
Finnish environmental officials concluded that clearing forests, removing soil and constructing roads while those assessments remained incomplete risked undermining that process.
The regulator has asked Tuike Finland to provide a written explanation and the company has an opportunity to respond before further enforcement steps are considered.
The order could delay projects that form part of one of Google’s largest European infrastructure expansions.
In September, Google announced plans to invest approximately 13 billion euros, or about $15 billion, in artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure in Finland through 2028. The investment is the company’s largest announced European infrastructure commitment to date.
The expansion includes three new data centers in northern Finland as Google seeks additional computing capacity for services including Gemini, Search, Maps and YouTube.
Finland has become increasingly attractive to data center operators because of relatively inexpensive land, a cool climate and substantial electricity-generation capacity.
Google’s investment also includes a 22-year agreement with Finnish utility Fortum under which the company could purchase as much as half of the output from the Loviisa nuclear power plant.
The rapid expansion has generated debate inside Finland over whether the country’s electricity grid and permitting system can accommodate the scale of planned data center development.
Opposition politicians have called for a national permitting framework to evaluate data center electricity demand, grid capacity and potential effects on consumer energy prices.
Google has said its Finnish investments will strengthen the economy and energy system, while Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has argued the country has sufficient power-generation capacity to support the projects.
The Muhos and Kajaani dispute highlights a different concern: whether the physical development of large AI infrastructure projects is moving faster than the environmental review process designed to evaluate them.
Google owns more than 2,000 hectares of land in the Muhos and Kajaani areas, where the planned developments have been described as among the largest data center zoning projects under consideration in Finland.
For now, the projects are not being canceled.
LVV’s action instead requires Google to stop work capable of significantly altering the sites while regulators complete the environmental assessments.
That means the company can continue engineering, surveying and other reversible planning work, but major clearing and earthmoving must stop.
The order comes only weeks after Google announced its $15 billion Finland investment, underscoring the tension between Europe’s accelerating demand for AI infrastructure and the environmental and permitting requirements governing the enormous physical footprint needed to support it.
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