Finland’s Licensing and Supervision Agency (LVV) has ordered Tuike Finland Oy, Google’s local subsidiary, to suspend all environmentally significant preparatory work at two planned data center sites in Muhos and Kajaani, with compliance required no later than October 23. The agency says extensive groundwork, including felling trees, stripping topsoil, and building roads and storage areas, was carried out before the mandatory environmental impact assessment was completed. More than 300 hectares of forest were cleared, and Tuike Finland must submit an explanation and compliance plan by October 14 or face formal enforcement proceedings.
The sites are part of Google’s roughly 13 billion euro ($15 billion) Finnish investment announced less than a month ago, the company’s largest single investment in Europe, aimed at supporting cloud and AI demand. Google said it would follow the agency’s guidance and acknowledged it had “fallen short” of its own standards.