Finland Orders Google to Halt Data Center Construction After Forest Cleared Without Required Environmental Review

Finland's Licensing and Supervision Authority, known as LVV, ordered Google's project company Tuike Finland Oy to immediately stop preparatory work at two planned data center sites in Muhos and Kajaani, with a hard deadline of October 23, 2026. The agency says the work went ahead without a mandatory environmental impact assessment, according to the BBC, Al Jazeera, Courthouse News, and Xinhua.

The company announced its €13 billion ($14.6 billion) Finland investment plan on September 9, 2026, calling it its largest single investment in Europe. Less than a month later, regulators are halting two of the four sites in that plan.

According to Tommi Muilu, head of LVV's environment department, the banned activities include felling trees, stripping topsoil, building site roads and storage areas, altering drainage ditches, excavation, blasting, and crushing. The Guardian reports that 330 hectares were cleared at Muhos and nearly 200 hectares at Kajaani. Xinhua reports tree clearing began in March 2026, with earthmoving and infrastructure work following.

Under Finnish rules, clearing more than 200 hectares requires an environmental assessment before work starts, not after. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation first flagged the issue in September, and LVV opened its investigation on September 19.

Tuike Finland has until October 14 to explain itself and lay out next steps. If it doesn't comply, LVV says it may launch enforcement proceedings, which could include fines.

Hanna Halmeenpaa, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, told AFP that "nature sites which should be preserved" were logged in the cleared area. Tapani Veistola, the group's chief operating officer, told The Guardian the Muhos site is "not a forest any more. It is a sand area," and called the pattern across both sites a "systemic problem" driven by an "overheated market" for data centers that's overwhelming small municipalities' ability to enforce their own rules.

A global tech company cleared roughly 530 hectares of forest, more than 1,300 acres combined, in a rural region before the legally required review was done. Whether that reflects corporate corner-cutting or a genuine, good-faith misreading of which law applied is exactly what LVV's enforcement process is now supposed to sort out.

Google's defense is that it followed a different statute. Spokesman Sondre Ronander told the BBC and AFP the company "acted in good faith under the Forestry Act," ran its own nature surveys, and put protections in place for high-value areas. Xinhua reports Finnish officials have pushed back on that framing directly: environmental impact assessment requirements sit under separate legislation from forestry law, and Finland's Minister of Climate and the Environment, Sari Multala, said responsibility runs through the entire subcontracting chain, with the parent company ultimately on the hook.

Google isn't disputing the bottom line. "We understand the concerns and have fallen short of our own high standards in this instance," Ronander said in a statement carried by the BBC, The Guardian, and Courthouse News. The company says it's now "advancing" landscaping and biodiversity plans, including tree planting across 130 hectares at Muhos.

Multala told the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat it would be "a serious matter" if the company and its subcontractors acted as alleged, and said she expects the overall Google projects to be delayed as a result of the assessment problems, per Courthouse News.

ZeroHedge frames the Finland order as part of a wider global pattern, listing delays at Oracle's Wisconsin and New Mexico campuses, a SoftBank energy project, a statewide pause in Texas, and an emergency power auction run by grid operator PJM, all within roughly three weeks. The outlet argues the AI buildout's real constraint has shifted from chip supply to permitting and power. That's ZeroHedge's own analytical framing tying separate stories together. None of the other sources reviewed here draw that connection, so it should be read as one outlet's interpretation rather than an established fact.

What is established: Google's investment plan calls for data centers in Muhos, Kajaani, Vaala, and an expanded Hamina site, construction it says will support over 37,000 jobs and add an average €3.6 billion a year to Finland's economy during the 2027-2028 build phase, per the BBC. Google also signed a 22-year power deal with Fortum covering up to half the output of the Loviisa nuclear plant, extending that plant's operating life to 2050.

Tuike Finland owes LVV a written explanation by October 14. The forced work stoppage takes effect no later than October 23. The environmental impact assessments themselves are still underway and, per The Guardian and Xinhua, are expected to wrap up later this year, which will determine whether Google's Muhos and Kajaani sites get built as planned or redesigned around whatever damage regulators find.