Alphabet-owned Google will invest a further 1 billion euros into the expansion of its data centre campus in Hamina, Finland to drive its artificial intelligence business growth in Europe.
The investment will be already the seventh expansion of its data centre in Southern Finland. It is expected to create 100 jobs at a facility that presently provides employment to roughly 400 professionals. Google declined to disclose what impact the investment will have on data capacity at the site.
The region where the facility is located, on Finland's south coast, offers a good supply of renewable power, which is vital for the firm’s target to run every office and data center on green energy by the end of this decade.
Representing 80% of the annual heat demand
To date, the heat from Google’s Hamina data center has been captured and recovered to heat the offices and buildings on site. Starting next year, the warm temperature coming from the data center will be recovered to optimize the district heating network energy efficiency and carbon emissions footprint.
'We will be recovering heat at the Google Hamina data center, which operates today with carbon-free energy at 97%. This means the recovered heat will also be 97% carbon free. It will represent 80% of the annual heat demand of the local district heating network according to Haminan Energia', Google stated.
Google is aiming to achieve net zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030.
