Google announced plans to expand its digital infrastructure in Finland, including data centers and local investments in Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala, alongside a new package of partnerships to provide energy and support electricity-grid stability. The package includes the company’s first agreement to extend the life of a nuclear power plant and increase its capacity, as well as wind projects and a battery system for electricity storage.
The move comes as Google says it has operated in Finland for more than 15 years, where the first onshore wind project linked to the company’s power-purchase agreements entered operation in 2019. According to the company, its clean-power-purchase agreements have added more energy to Finland’s grid than it has consumed so far, and have also helped open the power-purchase-agreement market to other companies.
A Nuclear Agreement Extending to 2050
Google entered into a power-purchase agreement with Fortum, which operates the plant, to extend the life of the Loviisa nuclear power plant. Loviisa employs approximately 580 people, while the plant currently supplies 10% of Finland’s electricity. Google says the plant would not have been able to continue operating beyond 2030 without Fortum’s program to invest in extending its life.
The agreement provides the plant with long-term revenue to support capital investments that would allow it to operate until 2050, with upgrades and increased capacity. Fortum’s investment program is valued at approximately €1 billion, but investment decisions concerning nearly 80% of the projects—approximately €700 million in capital expenditures needed for operation through 2050—remain pending, according to the note accompanying the article. Google and Fortum will also explore opportunities to develop new nuclear reactors at Loviisa.
Wind, Batteries, and Demand Response
The partnerships include support for two onshore wind projects developed by Valorem and Suomen Hyötytuuli, bringing the total new onshore wind capacity contracted by Google in Finland to 629 megawatts. The company is also enabling a 94-megawatt battery system near its site in Kajaani, which is expected to begin operating in late 2027.
The battery system will be used to balance the grid and limit price volatility, particularly when wind production declines. Google also intends to register its wind portfolio in the ancillary-services markets operated by Fingrid, while exploring with grid operators the possibility of temporarily reducing data-center consumption when the grid comes under pressure, based on a trial it carried out in Hamina during the energy crisis in 2022 and 2023.
What Changes in Practice?
The plan goes beyond purchasing clean electricity for data centers, linking demand expansion to the infrastructure’s location and to locally available generation, storage, and flexibility capacities. Google says a study it commissioned to simulate the addition of 1 gigawatt of hypothetical demand in the Oulu–Kajaani region, rather than in the southern region, estimated potential savings of €520 million for energy consumers in Finland over 20 years. This is an estimated modeling result, not realized savings or a guarantee of prices.
Google is working with the municipalities of Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala through the Energy Impact Program to fund local initiatives, including installing solar panels on municipality-owned housing, batteries and heat pumps in schools and sports facilities, and energy-efficient lighting projects. Some elements of the plan—particularly Fortum’s pending investments and the battery system’s expected operation in 2027—remain subject to implementation decisions and future timelines.
certi.news Analysis
The importance of the announcement lies not only in the expansion of data centers, but also in Google’s attempt to present a model linking the growth of digital demand to financing stable and renewable electricity sources and tools for balancing the grid. However, the source is the company’s own announcement, so estimates of savings and effects on prices should be treated as modeling results and announced commitments, not as results that have already been proven. Continued operation of Loviisa through 2050 also depends on completing investment and implementation decisions that have not yet been fully finalized.