This is an amusing little scandal, but it seems to be only a procedural issue. Assuming that Google has some basic competence, it selected locations where it's ultimately possible to build data centers while complying with all legal requirements.
My guess is that the government will eventually find that all requirements have been satisfied and let the projects move on. But because this is now a controversial issue, someone with the standing will very likely file a complaint. Then the projects will be stuck in administrative courts for a year or two.
Logging a few hundred hectares was not a problem. Google could have done that without additional permits, if their intention was to plant a new forest afterwards. Environmental impact assessment was only necessary, because they intended to replace the forest with something else.
The key question is whether Google can comply with the law after the fact. If they complete the assessment and the government finds nothing that would prevent the construction of the data centers, the project can go on. Maybe there will be some minor sanctions, as well as some delays, as they didn't do things properly the first time. And even if there is something that prevents construction, Google can still probably comply by planting a new forest.
> without completing an environmental impact assessment (EIA).
Because they didn't follow the procedure of first completing the EIA, which Google is surely familiar with, with all of their other datacenters/construction (especially ANYTHING in California, which was detrimentally bad until recently [1]).
The environmental impact assessment requirement is a national law, and the national government is responsible for approving it. But since elections are coming and the issue has become controversial, the government coalition will happily ignore it and let administrators and judges sort it out. They have bigger things to worry about.
Its a pretty egregious procedural oversight if you want to chalk it up to that.
For sure this is being politicized, for example claiming that the area was reduced to sand due to an overheated data center market. But to clear the land before doing legally required environmental impact studies is a pretty obvious mistake, and frankly I'm not sure how you'd even have landed on a plan for land clearing before doing said study if its required. How would you know what areas to clear, for example?
Companies can do that, but I don't particularly like when people assume that is what happened because they don't trust the businesses in question and assume bad faith. If you take that path, sure you get to blame the guilty, but you also end up blaming the innocent and you have committed to a course where things can only ever get worse because you refuse to allow anyone a chance to improve.
In an instance like this I am all for condemning their actions if there is evidence that they incentivised malpractice by the subcontractor, or were negligent in oversight of the contractor, or they had some reason to expect that the permits they were seeking would not be granted.
Going ahead without the required permits does require punishment, even if it was just a cock up, that is expected and reasonable.
Suggesting that this is a planned form of noncompliance is a much more serious incident, requiring a much harsher penalty, but it also requires some evidence to say it occurred.
> I hope in vain that the powers that be are able to punish them in a way they will actually feel...
they have such an obscene amount of money that no fine would ever matter to them. Jail time would do the trick though. Billionaires and trillionaires can't buy days of their life back.
Considering prime minister Orpo has already been quite vocal about supporting these data centers (when concerns were raised about electricity prices rising which he assured they won't be) citing economic growth and job increase, I doubt Google receives any kind of hard hitting sanctions for this.
Obligatory reminder that Finland is the happiest country and is in fact considered by all metrics among the least corrupt nation in the world. /s
"Forest" is a polite way to refer to what appears to be a monoculture plantation. To restore the land properly it would probably be necessary to remove 80%+ of the trees to make space for seeding or planting a diverse range of other species. Possibly 100% if the monoculture species already planted is not endemic.
Google street view imagery of the site showing logging completed by June 2026 and logs waiting collection: [1]
Sentinel-2 L2A imagery from 2026-10-11 showing the logged area: [2]
Assuming that you're correct and it is a monoculture plantation, they did not remove trees to make space for planting other species, they removed trees to make space for a data center.
If the translation is correct, Finland converted about 14,000 hectares of forest in the 2010s per year (without replacement), and cut about 173,000 hectares per year in general (with replacement).
I suspect how much people think this was an honest mistake with their 330 hectares (apparently following the forestry rules but missing EIA) will depend on people's priors.
This is probably all native scots pine or norway spruce, as that is what almost all of finland's forests are, and they don't plant sitka spruce plantations there like they do in Ireland or other places in Europe.
That said, there's very little old growth forest in finland and this obviously is not old growth.
I'm curious though if you know, what other species you'd expect to see here if it was properly restored?
In parts of Australia there are designated "reference areas" which have a higher level of environmental protection than national parks. They are typically remote areas that humans do not visit and have not historically and directly disturbed. These areas are also typically less disturbed by other external factors such as seeding of non-endemic species by birds. Scientists use such areas as a reference to what other less protected areas of the environment would have looked like before human impact. In scientific journals you'll find surveys of such reference areas including the prevalence of different taxon, as well as surveys of national parks or other areas being compared.
I've tried to find similar for Finland. The closest I've found is [1] which maps "old forests" which are defined to be over 100 years old (not actually very old). The three examples [2], [3] and [4] are Google street view imagery of nearby "old forests" and all indicate a much higher biodiversity and natural planting than the site Google has cleared. The site Google has cleared and nearby forests are visible in overhead imagery as having a pattern of tree plantings (distinct rows/grid) and show visible disturbance for forestry trails (ground compaction), whereas the "old forest" sites don't have these patterns. The "old forest" sites also show variance in trunk diameters, greater separation between trunks, more forest floor diversity and more tree variety (both taxon and structure). Plantation forests have trees deliberately planted too close to each other to encourage upright growth habit, lower limbs are deliberately removed and trees thinned after some years, all to maximise the number of sawmill-ready trunks. Revegetation planting would look completely different to what occurred at the Google site.
Revegetation planting and ongoing management is also much more expensive to do correctly. It's a struggle to find success stories. Best examples likely involve aerial seeding and complex seed collection and preparation, as well as ongoing manual weed management and introduced species control for 20+ years. There is often a fair bit of complexity to simulating nature to make seeds viable--for example, refer to Przewalski's Horse case study where hoofed animals were reintroduced and found to be essential for embedding seeds at required depth and reshaping the terrain to support seed germination. More examples are water courses upstream having to be cleared of weeds first, introduced animals need to be excluded/culled, etc, etc.
Thanks, that's interesting. I mostly agree. I'm not sure the dominant tree species would vary much, as Finland's forests, both old growth and managed, are mostly scots pine, norway spruce, and birch -- which looks to be what we see here in both the old forest and the trees around the edge of what Google cleared.
Definitely an older forest will have more complexity and thus diversity of understory etc.
I imagine a lot of the beneficial aspects of old forest, e.g. structural complexity, snags and downed logs, canopy gaps where trees fell, etc will develop on their own given time, in many of Finland's managed/logged forests. I think this is what we see in the "old forest" examples. And it is what I've seen in the areas I've lived in the USA. And, humans can try to help these things develop sooner, which like you say is often expensive and complex.
Some places like California, eucalyptus will come in and completely take over some forested areas after they're cleared, and so it won't naturally become like old native forest again. I don't think they have something quite like that in Finland but I'm curious if they do. I don't know what will happen with these patches of eucalyptus in another few hundred years if humans don't intervene.
There's huge areas of Finland that are very much protected (e.g. you can only walk on two trails in the whole preserve). Do an image search for Kevo trail to get an idea.
> In parts of Australia there are designated "reference areas" which have a higher level of environmental protection than national parks. They are typically remote areas that humans do not visit and have not historically and directly disturbed.
> I've tried to find similar for Finland. The closest I've found is [1] which maps "old forests" which are defined to be over 100 years old (not actually very old).
The history of civilization in Finland is much longer than the history of civilization in Australia. You shouldn't expect to be able to find "areas that humans have not historically disturbed" in most parts of the world. Certainly not in parts of the world that can grow trees.
Living on land with care and stewardship as indigenous peoples often did is very different to clear-felling for agriculture or monoculture forestry, the strongest plausible interpretation would be that by "directly disturbed", the GP meant the latter.
I can tell you that this is, for better or worse, what a lot "forests" look like in Sweden (and I assume, Finland too). A large part of our forests are industriskog (industrial forest).
Great for the economy (in the short term), not great for biodiversity.
Either way, you need to complete the EIA. It'd probably show that this was, indeed, a good location for a DC. Not doing the assessment before starting to chop down the trees is the problem here, not that the forest is particularly ecologically valuable.
Finn here. Not really. You're allowed to log if you resow.
So this seems to be a calculated move: When permits pass, prep is done. Worth paying minor fines for jumping the gun. Permits don't pass, just resow. That's a well informed expected value calculation.
That's a bad calculation, if the risk model failed to account for a political scandal in a small country that's very proud of their tree plantations and deeply suspicious of megacaps. But even with that tail risk realizing the likely outcome is that permits pass and prep is done. People make some noise, you get some bad PR and pay more than anticipated. Might seem like not worth the costs in retrospect, but hardly a disaster.
'"Forest" is a polite way to refer to what appears to be a monoculture plantation.' That would mean that Europe almost has no Forest according to you and there's nothing worth protecting?
Pretty much yes, say Germany and Britain cut down almost all of the forests that were not too steep to farm on centuries ago, which make their cries to other parts of the world to stop deforestation pretty hypocritical.
Most of Finland's forests are planted. Some of that is for logging but also some of that is for conservation purposes. In Finland, all planted forests are native species.
But the whole controversy here is that they cut down some of the rare native old-growth forests. That's the part environmental groups are most upset about
> More than 75% of Finland’s land area is covered with forest. [...] About 3 million hectares of Finnish forests are protected or under restricted use, which represents 13% of the total surface area of forests (forest land and low-productive forests). The area of protected forests fully excluded from fellings is 2.5 million hectares, which represents 10.8% of the total surface area of forest and low-productive forest land.
What you call "monoculture plantation" looks just typical Finnish planted forest to me. I mean sure, it's not in its natural state, but I wouldn't call it a "monoculture plantation" either. Plenty of wildlife and species live in these forests. The species are endemic, non-endemic trees are only planted in cities, private property and such for their looks.
There are moose, bears, wolves, foxes, rabbits and so on living in these "monoculture plantations".
You're clearly not familiar with native forests wherever ice sheets retreated and the soil is rich. These conditions naturally tend towards a "monoculture" (at least at the canopy level). The understory and soil and ecosystems are still extremely rich
I think local governments should be regulating and zoning new data center construction in a way that forces them to rehabilitate old industrial brownfields. There’s plenty of land already spoiled by human activity that can be reused. No reason to be cleaning nature for a warehouse full of computers that could be built anywhere.
Because they want to move in and can afford it. Same reason that apartment complexes have to add greenspace or subsidized apartments as a condition of getting a zoning variance.
Maybe not a great example. Municipalities should fund public works projects themselves using sane taxation revenue instead of cryptically taxing private land improvement projects.
That's just what the poster above decided, not "the people" / legislation. Key words "I think" in the comment. Asking that person why they are going after datacenters specifically is a valid question.
They said this, but then they went ahead and fought Finland in court. They claimed this was mostly planted forest but they also cut down plenty of native forest
That's the entire reason the court stopped construction. It's in the public documents. The ESA was supposed to identify any plots of old growth native forests (especially stuff like bogs and streams). Google rushed to cut everything down to remove any evidence of old growth habitats but they claimed that they did their own internal assessment beforehand and preserved a few of those sites. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (aka Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto) is the group that used satellite imagery to argue in court that they lied and that there were several native, protected strands that were NOT spared.
Which court stopped construction? I have not read that courts are involved at all yet, only that Finnish Supervisory Agency (Lupa- ja valvontavirasto LVV) has ordered Google to stop construction. I found a source [0] claiming that some areas that are important for biodiversity were first spared and then cut down, but this does not mean that they were old growth and the Muhos county official Mikko Kari states "[The areas] are not legally mandated to be protected."
Now, I'm not a fan of Google and I'd much prefer this whole project was scrapped, which is why I'm interested if there are sources that provide something that I've missed from the Finnish media.
I think it was their Siri. Apple Intelligence lags a lot behind competitors, and back during WWDC last year Craig made an announcement about how "Siri had fallen short of expectations".
they gave them extra time to finish the dirty deeds
> the Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) said it had issued a notice to the company to “immediately suspend” – by 23 October at the latest
Fines are just there as a threat to make sure they're not behind on their (checks notes...what are they calling it these days again...oh that's right) PAC contributions.
These could be on the order of 300k trees, illegally cutting a tree in Germany could cost up to 50k euro, that sums up to 15B Euro. Bad math but it gives a perspective on the magnitude of not caring about the natural environment.
I'm of course against illegal logging, but in this case there was very little loss of the environment. These planted pine forests in the Nordics are not biodiversity hubs in any stretch of imagination. They do support life, but not much. You will generally not meet any animal there, except some birds perhaps if you're lucky. It would be another matter altogether if this was an old growth forest. This one is more like just a procedural blunder.
> While Google argued the land was standard commercial forest harvested under the Forestry Act, local environmental groups—including the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto)—protested, claiming that indiscriminate logging had encroached upon native habitats and high-value nature sites that should have been preserved.
Also, even much of the planted forests were practicing GTR (Green Tree Retention) techniques which have been spreading in usage across Finland. It's a technique to increase native biodiversity. It is incorrect to state that these planted forests are purely for commercial purposes
And a lot of the non-native forests were explicitly government-protected rare native habitats.
We're talking about 815 acres at Muhos and another 494 acres at Kajaani. Call me cynical but it seems clear that making sure to get rid of the high value native forests and say "woops, sorry" was the strategy. If they'd left them, it would imperil the entire construction project. Now activists have the onus on them to prove how much was native vs planted from unreliable old datasets and imagery.
I said incalculable loss because the DC will replace something that helped cool the planet with something that will heat it. I wasn't talking about bio diversity, I'm talking about the boot in the face during climate crisis.
Did you feel the same when Tesla cut down trees in Brandenburg to build a Gigafactory? And, all buildings -- residences or commercial -- cause a negative impact on the planet because they have a positive carbon footprint. Really, what is being said here? Not much.
You should say incalculable loss because Google cut down actual native forests that were legally protected. These forests are very rare and very biodiverse.
GP is spreading misinformation. Data center companies seem to have bot armies on HN nowadays
This is absolutely untrue and an overstatement of even Google's position in court. Google claims it was "mostly" planted. It's undeniable that tons of very rare native forests were cut down alongside this (we're talking about 815 acres in Muhos and 494 acres in Kajaani). Google very clearly intended to destroy them as quickly as possible to leave activists relying on old documents and unreliable datasets to make their claims. If they'd left those native forests it would have threatened the whole construction project.
Also much of those planted forests were GTR zones. These are planted forests that use GTR techniques to increase and protect native biodiversity.
It's also incorrect to say they were monocultures since they were mixes of native tree species.
> It's undeniable that tons of very rare native forests were cut down alongside this (we're talking about 815 acres in Muhos and 494 acres in Kajaani). Google very clearly intended to destroy them as quickly as possible to leave activists relying on old documents and unreliable datasets to make their claims. If they'd left those native forests it would have threatened the whole construction project.
What is your source?
Also, what is the meaning of "GTR" in Finnish or English? Google tells me nothing.
Green Tree Retention. It specifically means the practice leaving certain trees in these planted forests but its evolved to encompass much more research and practices.
This whole debate is happening because Google rushed to clear the sites before the EIA was completed which was meant to identify the sites of dense native forests. Google claims it did its own internal reviews and preserved a few crucial sites, but the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, aka Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto, (which is the group that got work stopped) used satellite imagery to prove there were multiple dense native forest sites that also got cut down
Google's entire bet here is that it could turn this into a "procedural issue" of "woops, we didn't quite finish the EIA before we started. oh well, we'll just pay the fine" because they clearly knew there was plenty of protected dense native forest patches. They wanted to remove all the evidence of them as quickly as possible
As someone who's seen how this sausage is made in another jurisdction I assume what's going on here is Google or the builder got some sort of statement from some board to the tune of "oh well because you checked whatever boxes we will exercise our discretionary authority to waive this for you, the exact opposite of what how we'd behave if you were some uppity peasant seeking to develop some petty land". Naturally there are some who don't like this have probably complained to the next authority up who's putting some scrutiny on the situation and whatever approval they were given has been rescinded and now they gotta do it the hard expensive way.
Or it might be one of those cases where the discretionary BS you can be put through is so onerous and capricious that the cheapest way to get it done is to bulldoze first, let the threats fly and use whatever legal maneuvering that gets you to wind up with a more favorable venue (the higher up you go the more friendly to industry permitting authorities tend to become).
Better for whoever Google is doing free work for in exchange for the permitting people not being dicks. Like usually the way this works is the developer grants concessions or signs a "I promise I'll make a park out of this other parcel" or whatever in order to get their easy approval. If they have to fight for it that'll probably go away.
How many hectares of forest did Tesla cut down to build the Brandenburg, Germany factory? And, did it make news headlines? No, it did not. This story is pure data center hysteria.
yeah i was browsering the oneline shop and find out Nokia dont release smart phones anymore. they used to have several series with Anriod and i have one, it's pretty good.
High tech industry couldn't compete against the Chinese, the Ukraine War killed a huge chunk of export industries, aging population, successive governments shifting money from one welfare pocket to another, escalating unemployment eroding tax base and now when the money has ran out, aggressive austerity measures.
Also, earlier Nokia got sniped by Microsoft and profitable wood industries were decimated by transition from paper magazines (high quality, high value add paper) to digital (no paper) --> industry now makes pulp, which is low-value-add.
People keep making comments like this about Nokia, but is there really any chance they’d still exist as an independent phone/operating system maker if the Microsoft buyout didn’t occur?
I didn't even know Finland had a right-wing party. maybe to most people, the stereotype of Nordic countries like Finland is just high social welfare, left-wing, and freezing cold."
Does it really? I've been to mono forests that basically had one type of visible bug, maybe 2 kind of spiders and maybe a squirrel but definitely no birds (because of the lack of bugs)
Meanwhile the average urban area in Switzerland comes with many different types of plants and areas.
I see plenty of birds in these Finnish planted forests, and definitely lots of bugs too, though you can't see them most of the time. Squirrels, moose, foxes, bears, wolves, deer, all live in them. Blueberries, lingonberries and wide variety of mushroom too. Of course you don't see any of them from aerial pictures or Google Street view. You see the big trees.
Obviously a naturally formed forests would have even more biodiversity, but these Finnish industrial forests are by no means dead. Some areas are more lush than others, depending on the ground and whether there's lakes or rivers nearby. If the ground is good, other types of trees tend to spread naturally, in addition to whatever was planted.
This article seems like pretty typical Guardian clickbait and "data center hysteria". It isn't Google who is responsible; it is the primary contractor: Tuike Finland Oy.
Also, if this forest was being cut down to build an organic vegetable farm or preschool or petting zoo, would we be seeing the same headline? Not a chance in hell. This part is the most egregious reach to me:
> The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation said the sites had been reduced to “sand”
Cry me a river. Would you say the same if it wasn't a data center? And, is this land environmentally important or sensitive? Again, no information given; only hysteria.
It was economic forest without any conservative value. You are allows to cut down trees on your own land.
If you cut down more than 200 hectares you need to make a statement about effects for the environment. Google cut down 300 at Muhos.
There will be no notable effects on environment because the site is economic forest or junk land, unles such environmental effect is made up by government officials to slow down Google.
Some of what google cut down was indeed planted forest (which are always native species in Finland) but the entire controversy here is that google also cut down multiple protected areas of rare native forests.
Also planted forests are not just for logging purposes. Finland has been investing in GTR techniques that are specifically aimed at protecting and increasing native biodiversity so there is still conservation value in many of these planted forests
About three quarters of Finland is forest, the highest share in Europe. Cutting down a small area is blown out of proportions, they could of course plant trees to offset in another place. Put every datacenter on Earth together and the land would hold maybe 20 million trees, about 1 in 150,000 of the world’s trees, or half a day of global deforestation.
It is not really forest, but plantation, actively managed and quite low in nature values/diversity. There is a push from EU to conserve the last remaining primary forests in Finland, but it is being opposed by the government and industry.
A big part of that fight is setting up the criteria for primary forests, so I can't easily give you a percentage number of how much of Finland is forest. But not much.
Much of it is planted forests (of native species). Some of those planted forests are for logging purposes and some of it is for GTR purposes to protect biodiversity.
A lot of what Google cut down was planted forests, but the crucial part here is they also cut down some really rare native forests.
It's typical greenwashing though. Plant a few trees so you don't have to feel bad about the energy use. But it's all short term monoculture forests they're planting. Not destroying the real forest we have left is the better option. But yeah that's hard, you can't claim that as a quick win and make a lot of money off of it.
These initiatives are so small that they don't make a dent in the actual problem and for every "green" kilowatt hour some other factory burns extra coal because there's no green capacity left.
All ecosia does is give people who are mildly environmentally conscious an excuse to not feel guilty, and making good money off it. It's just like the 2$ carbon offset fees on flights. No way that tiny amount actually offsets anything of course. It's just someone getting rich of absolving others' guilt.
That photo looks horrible. Of all places, why cut down a ton of trees to build a data center. I hope the trees were used to build housing for the homeless or something. Maybe a youth center at least?
I don’t know much about Findland, so maybe there are trees everywhere.
There indeed are trees everywhere, forest cover in Finland is 74%. If the land is not in use, it will turn into forest naturally, though such land is usually planted on purpose to speed up the growth. And then it will be logged, and regrown.
I assume locals likely won't be angry about the loss of the trees, but they will be angry about a megacorp skirting the regulations, as Finland is a very rules and regulations oriented country.
"Don't be evil" went away when the purchased Doubleclick advertising company completed hollowing out the old "Don't be evil" Google from the inside out.
That's just the Muhos site. Another 200 hectares at the Kajaani site.
Much of Finland's forest cover is planted forests which tend to be lower in biodiversity. But the controversy here is that Google also cut down a lot of really rare (and legally protected) native forests.
Most of the lost Amazon forest was coverted into agricultural land to raise cattle and grow soybeans (to later feed pigs). It had nothing to do with data centers.
As an executive of a company, I can think of no reason to remove that as a value unless of course (checks notes) you are condoning and encouraging evil.
Ok, it was moved to some place almost nobody sees it. Tbh I'm happy with that, cause it was a bad slogan. Anyone outside a very tight Google bubble saw it as something an evil company would obviously say.
We’re in the middle of the next technological revolution and not building is our best bet? You could’ve said that about the green revolution we should have left the fertilizer in the ground cause now we have 10 billion people and all the problems that come with it.
So what, if we don't invent the technology tomorrow we will next year. It's not like the world stops turning if innovation slows down a bit. In fact a lot of people think it's going too fast now. Even a lot of people in the industry.
And we shouldn't have made so unsustainably many people, I really don't understand why people are still fussing about birth rates when environmental crises are piling up (and social ones too like cost of living/housing)
I know this is like 2 hops off topic now, but... There's no shortage of people worldwide, it's just that particular countries have issues with low birth rates.
On topic, yes the datacenter growth can be slower.
In my opinion the jury is still out on the green revolution. Yes it allowed us to produce more tonnage per acre and produce crops in regions that previously couldn't, but it did so at the expense of drastically increase the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, larger and heavier equipment, etc.
Among other things, that system is adding a lot of salt to those fields and polluting our water with all the runoff.
Did it allow us to feed more people and grow the population? Yes, no question. But is that going to prove to be sustainable long term? We'll see what happens if and when those inputs are no longer available at scale.
How is that a helpful comment? Doy out have any arguments that might help convince me that the green revolution has in fact proven out to be worth the externalities?
All this red tape just slows down innovation. There is too much of a compute shortage right now that we need to figure out how to accelerate datacenter build outs.
I agree, and, want to point out this wasn't old growth forest. At least, none of the standing trees in the photos look like old growth. If it was, that would be a huge story, but it would have been very odd for Google to put a data center in old growth forest. Almost all of Finland is covered by managed/logged forests like this, so it's kind of inevitable if building a datacenter there that it is going to replace forest.
The same is true in much of the world actually, over half of the earth's surface was forested before humans started clearing it.
It's a shortage of everything. Power, datacenters, chips, etc. If you don't see it now, just look at where estimates are projecting the demand in even a couple years.
Is it really a shortage of chips and not datacenters? Nobody seems to accurately know this fact, just semiconductor companies saying were at future capacity for years.
That does seem a bit dramatic. What Google did here, assuming the reporting is true, is absolutely bad but it isn't unprecedented. I'm not sure how clearing land for a development would be considered a new level of evil.
That's not the most evil thing that Google has been doing. Setting up a global surveillance network comes to mind. And algorithm based engagement on things like YouTube. They've also led the industry monetisation of personal data.
I think the world would be a much better place if Google and it's peers had never existed.
But it wasn't their own high standards, it was a legal obligation that they neglected?
I hope in vain that the powers that be are able to punish them in a way they will actually feel...
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