Correction: The article says someone is requesting that they halt construction so they can determine if any laws were broken because some people think they may have not waited appropriately for all environmental reviews to clear, but as far as I can tell nobody has determined if anything illegal was done yet.
> She is asking the LVV to halt the entire construction site so that authorities can determine whether Google tried to bring the forest down without first obtaining formal approval.
For a lot of environmental regulations, whether or not a permit is needed is most of the question.
In the US, if you want to build a shed in the middle of a wetland, you need to go through an arduous permitting process and are unlikely to gain approval. If you want to build it within 100 feet, you can probably do it, but you need to confer with the relevant DEC to show that you won't negatively impact the wetland during construction. If you're more than 100 feet away, you don't even need to talk to the DEC, because you're not in protected land.
Of course, if the DEC decides they don't think your shed is outside the 100 ft adjacent area, they may decide to do a demarcation and figure out exactly where your shed is relative to the wetland, and if you messed up you're in trouble. But if they send out a biologist to demarcate the wetland and you're far enough away, you're fine.
So many people, if they think it's ambiguous, will take the time to go through an abbreviated permitting process to get a certificate of "no permit needed", to save themselves the headache later on.
If you go through a process like this, chances are people with local expertise will tell you you're wasting your time -- the case looks pretty clear cut, and hardly anyone ever has trouble in such circumstances. The clerk at the department responsible for issuing the "no permit needed" certificate may tell you you're wasting everyone's time.
But if you're a big corporation like Google, you don't really have an excuse not to do it. You can afford the lawyers, you can afford to plan years in advance, and so many more people are going to notice if you skip steps. Even if you end up being in the legal clear, no permit was needed, you're so much better off getting it in writing in advance.
This comment was made ~15 minutes after the article posted, the only other comment at the time was in agreement, and all but 1 of the first 11 comments in the 30 minutes it took to get to the front page were in support.
I'd say you thought right HN is generally against climate change but I'm not sure where you got the idea little to no-one cares.
For anyone else who can never remember how much a hectare is and think "420 football fields" sounds more like a joke than an area: 300 hectares = 3 sq km
/ ~1.16 sq miles
If it's found they really did skip the required steps then I hope there is actual action about it.
Nuclear power plants take a very long time to build, it can be 7-10 years before you even begin construction due to all the permits, politics and planning.
As for scaling massive amounts of solar/wind... that's exactly what China is doing to power their infrastructure buildouts.
> Does it really matter so desperately if it takes your AI query an extra 10 ms to go to the middle of nowhere and we have to wait to build renewable or nuclear power to scale it?
The middle of nowhere in Finland is likely to be a forest (about 80% coverage).
Interesting the forest area in question doesn't appear to be some sort of amazing old growth forest thats been there for centuries it appears to be old logging sites that was maybe reforested a few decades or so ago.
None of this has anything to do with forests, and a step beyond that, doesn't have anything to do with datacenters either. It's entirely panicked flailing about AI capabilities.
>> "In our view, operations at this construction site should be suspended until it is clarified whether the project is in compliance with the law," Hanna Halmeenpaa, chair of the board of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, who filed the request with the agency, told AFP at the edge of the deforested area.
>> "From the satellite images, we've seen that nature sites which should be preserved have also been logged," she added, explaining that the size of the clear-cut area was comparable to 420 football fields.
I just can't bring myself to believe that a Finnish bureaucrat, speaking to a French news agency, explained that the area in question was comparable in size to 420 football fields.
And in fact the numbers don't seem to work. The area is estimated at "more than 300 hectares". 420 football fields is more like 224 hectares.
On the other hand, 420 soccer pitches would total 299.9 hectares. This tells us some interesting things:
1. The area in question may be "more than 300 hectares", but it's also less than 307 hectares (which could fit 430 soccer pitches). Or, alternatively, zero effort was made to express the actual cleared area in terms of soccer pitches, and it was first rounded to 300 hectares and then the rounded figure was converted to soccer pitches. (Which I have to assume was done by AFP and not by the Finnish government.)
2. Either the "global audience" that TechSpot serves doesn't include the United States, or they copied a French agency's English-language press release without bothering to consider whether any of the numbers in it made sense.
So Google reduced the forested land by 0.00000013%
I'm so tired of every news outlet trying to turn everything datacenter related into a panic-worthy event.
The real story is a debate about whether they followed the right procedures. Google says they did. The chair of a Finnish Nature Conservation Association says maybe they didn't:
> She is asking the LVV to halt the entire construction site so that authorities can determine whether Google tried to bring the forest down without first obtaining formal approval.
So they want to halt construction to determine if any permitting approval wasn't done appropriately? This is getting so much press that I assumed they had actual evidence that this was illegal, not just someone's suspicion and request to investigate.
This article is a bit old, LVV has already ordered Google to stop construction until the YVA processes are done. What is still unclear is if Google will face any repercussions for acting before the YVA was done, but it is looking unlikely.
That seems like a bit of a false equivalency this was not some precious old growth forest, it was basically a managed logging area so more comparable to some farm land in the US, and this is me speaking as a certified tree hugger here.
Forested land is rotated with trees to provide a sustainable resource without removing it.
Google bulldozing a square mile of trees is not comparable to normal forestry operations, because they are not replacing it with trees. They are replacing it with a massive concrete building which will produce loads of heat and suck up loads of local power and water.
This is why there is outrage, not because they are destroying the trees but what they are doing in the place of them.
If it was done illegally, it shouldn’t have been done. But I wanted some numbers to put this in perspective.
Forest loss in Finland has averaged about 243,000 hectares per year in recent years through 2025
Finland has 20.3 million to 26.3 million hectares of forestry and forest land depending on the classification used.
The United States has a gross forest loss of about 3 million acres per year, which is largely offset by 2.6 million acres of non-forest-to-forest conversion.
Brazil cleared 985,000 hectares of forest last year.
India approved the diversion of 26,858 hectares of forest last year.
Finland has a lot of people who care about forest and Finland needs to pay fines for EU if they don't have enough forest to suck CO2 from the air.
Google cut corners here, and didn't ask for the needed permissions. And the prime minister doesn't want to show his conversation with Google regarding this.
People are really pissed.
Edit: and the electricity prices are going up due to these data centers. And the profits from them don't stay in Finland, but go to American corporations. There should be Finnish data centers owned by Finns instead of having Google to take the cheap electricity and taking profits out.
Right, I think if we all had the same transparency, regulatory oversight, and involved electorate, we'd be as concerned with the other massive logging projects around the world.
I'm glad this one is getting attention, though. May the Finnish people show us how we can get it right.
Oh the logging projects also get a LOT of attention. It's just that the current government is center-right / far right, and they just let the logging to continue no matter the sanctions from the EU.
There are a lot of people who are against this, and protest against this. Looking at the polls, seems that it will change in the next elections, like a lot.
Same thing with data centres in Norway. We're planning to waste heaps of our renewable energy on generating profits for a small cabal of assholes in SV. For what? Luckily there's been more political pushback against it here recently, but it's so tame. Just for once I'd like to see some conviction. Pause all ongoing constructions, and launch corruption probes into all the local politicians that pushed this stuff through. I bet there's lots of corruption there. On a national level, we don't have corruption on anything near the systemic scale you see in the US. Some bad apples, and lots of mole hills made into mountains by the press, but nothing like the US where it seems like most of congress is pretty much openly corrupt.
Local politicians though? Oh boy. Seems like every time there's some ongoing project in a smaller municipality involving commercial exploitation of natural resources(like undeveloped land, minerals, hydropower capacity, etc) there's a mayor and/or municipal council members who profit from it financially or otherwise. They have shares/board seats in a holding company owning the land, local contractors, etc. Seems like this is very widespread, and rarely leads to serious consequences, and even when it does, it happens so late that the project is already built, or so far underway it doesn't get stopped. Shit pisses me off.
I'm sure data centres are no different. Because I can't imagine a cost-benefit analysis of them that makes any sense from the point of view of the local community.
>generating profits for a small cabal of assholes in SV.
People say that, but users are the ones capturing most if not almost all of the profit.
You don't cut Anthropic a check every time a new user signs up on your platform. You pay them a small slice of the revenue that their models generate for you.
This is the kind of "paperwork maximal" nonsense that is killing Europe.
Google DID apply for the right permissions, and they even had a consultant on the ground with years of experience who was supposed to navigate these complexities ... and even WITH all that, you get the result of idiots saying "Google BYPASSED OUR LAWS!!!!!"
Sit in the shoes of a Google lawyer trying to navigate all of this nonsense. Why is there not one government entity telling Google, okay, you need to do XYZ to do this. Instead, they got the ok from several Finnish agencies to go ahead. And then, even as a surprise to the exiting Finnish government agencies they were working with, yet ANOTHER agency shows up and says OH YOU DIDNT DO ABCDEFGHIJK steps.
Clearly the poeple who Okd this and were meant to keep a watchful eye either havent been to Finland in their lives or were busy taking naps in the Google appointed nap room.
Doing anything in Finland involving a potted plant would attract the wrath of any of the 5 people who live there, so no bro Im not surprised.
People are also concerned about those losses of forest too. And they do make the news. The rapid increase in rainforest loss in Brazil is often in the news.
Loss of forests affects us all. And they’re not as renewable as people think.
Brazil has one of if not the best laws about conservation on the planet!
with that said, ~ 80% of forest loss is due to livestock. we export most of our meat. now a bunch of moralist are worried with their bellies full of cheese and meat
With the current admin the deforestation rates in Brazil are now the lowest they have been for decades.
Unfortunately that will be over by next week probably :/
Hmm this seems like whataboutism, but I'm not sure that was your intention. The big issue here is what you initially touched on: did they break the law?
I don't think those are necessarily fair comparisons either. Countries like Brazil and India may not have the same regulatory strength as countries in the EU and perhaps public appetite is not as sensitive to such matters either. Finland is well known for being very protective of their natural areas.
Here in the US, I've seen it make news when a neighbor cuts down a few trees on another neighbors property without permission. That doesn't make it any less valid of an issue than a company razing down acres worth.
> There are a lot of entities clearing lots of forest every day. Interesting that this one makes news.
Are you approaching this from the angle that we shouldn't be making this a big deal because we don't for the others? Because I would approach it from the opposite direction: we should make the others just as big (if not bigger) a deal as this.
The commenter’s insinuation is that the article was written in bad faith. Which do you think was closer to the journalist’s process in writing this article:
1) Start an investigation into deforestation, leading to the discovery of the deforestation caused by this datacenter?
2) Start an investigation into anything that maligns datacenters?
How is the article written in bad faith? Did you even read the title let alone the article?
The title: Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest for a data center, and regulators want answers
The opening sentence: Finland's regulator says the environmental review came too late, Google says it followed the law
I'm going with option #1 here because the article represents both sides here equally and makes no claims that laws were broken, only that an investigation is underway. Point me to where it indicates #2 for you.
Actual evidence for or against either motivation would involve investigating the journalist's notes, search history,... and we're obviously not getting any of that so all we have to work with is our priors. Here are mine:
-The amount of deforestation discussed in this article is miniscule compared to the global amount. The probability of the journalist investigating or the editor of the outlet deciding to platform this specific case by uniformly random chance is small.
-Negative news stories about datacenters, AI, tech, etc. are extremely common and highly engaging. The probability of a journalist/editor deciding to specifically seek out an anti-datacenter story is high.
Given these two priors, what do you think the journalists most likely motivations are (or do you disagree with my claims)? You were able to deduce my own motivations for posting, can you do the same for the news outlet?
And in order to not be a bad faith actor myself, let me clarify my motivations for posting: I am here to express dissatisfaction with an unreasonable amount of anti-datacenter bias in the media.
> The amount of deforestation discussed in this article is miniscule compared to the global amount.
By that logic, why not cut half of Finland's forests? I'm sure they won't mind since it's such a small area globally after all.
And I think there are also other nuances than just net loss of forest.
There's also another hypothetical angle to consider which is that Google's egregious deforestation here may be somewhat self-limited due to prior knowledge of Finnish environmental regulations being more strictly enforced. "It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" comes to mind. Imagine then what Google could be doing in other areas of the world where they can freely pave through the land without such oversight. The cumulative destruction then becomes a much larger issue than this "small" chunk of land.
An unfathomable amount of burning. The worst in history and yes the government numbers are drastically understated, probably intentionally because they get a vast amount of foreign funding to protect the rainforest in the country.
'Kovan viikon ilta' (the Finnish weekly late night show) said Google had filed for deforestation requests that were small enough they did not warrant an environmental impact review. But it turned out there were quite a few small, adjacent deforestation requests so yeah it was quite certainly illegal :D
AKA smurfing. In this case the association is easy: desrtuction of forest and the bad guy name starts with G. If they would have the same luck than Gargamel...
"My town put a dog park near the brook and now on top of the local chemical companies dumping waste, we have dog urine getting into the water. We need to ban dog parks."
Also the forest was cleared on its own land. The owner by default can do whatever they want with their own forest. It was junk land and economic forest, not any Rivendell. Unlike to contain anything to protect.
Google cut 200 hectares, the requirement for environmental study was 150. It’s likely many Finnish companies exceeds the same threshold everyday without questions.
> The owner by default can do whatever they want with their own forest
Are you citing Finnish law here? Because where I live, this is not true. If you buy forest land, you're buying a lot of responsibilities along with it. You can mine the forest for wood some, but within parameters that ensure you won't kill it.
> The owner by default can do whatever they want with their own forest.
This is false. In Finland by default: 1) you must file a notice of any major logging in advance; 2) you need to plant the same amount of trees that you cut; and 3) zoning, key habitats or environmental impact completely prevent logging in many areas even if the land is privately owned.
No, either you misunderstood or there was misinformation in the other thread.
There are two things that Google would’ve been allowed to legally do:
* Log the trees for economic use, then plant new ones on the same property, definitely not do terrain alterations. But obviously that’s not what they wanted to do, they wanted to build a data center.
* Log less than 150 hectares, do any earthmoving etc needed within that area, build a data center.
These are mutually exclusive operations.
There’s no world in which Google would’ve been allowed to log the 300 hectares and do all the other preparative work on the property that they’ve done. They were told that they need a YVA (evaluation of environmental impact) process before doing anything beyond some very light reversible preparations because the area they wanted to modify exceeded 150 ha.
Somehow, even with the ability to hire the best lawyers in the country, they either fucked up and misunderstood the relevant legislation and the quite clear communication from LVV, the govt office responsible, or they just ignored all that and reasoned that they can get away with it.
>> 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.
>> Either way, you need to complete the EIA [environmental impact assessment]. It'd probably show that this was, indeed, a good location for a DC [data center]. 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 [sic]. But even with that tail risk realizing the likely outcome is that permits pass and prep is done.
>> 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."
---
The takeaway appears to be that LVV hasn't actually stated what they think the problem is, but they want to do an investigation, and that cutting down the trees poses no legal problems. At least, according to local regulators. If doing some earthwork between logging and sowing is a problem, there seems to be no mention of the fact anywhere, including in statements by the agency that wants to stop the development.
About a square mile, and the problem is procedural nonsense about the timing of paperwork rather than the paperwork actually showing a problem. Storm in a teacup.
Google might end up paying some minimal fine and everyone else will continue to drink their tea.
Google probably even factored in the expected fine versus having the data centre done X months/years earlier compared to completing all the red tape in due course.
That’s how corps make profit: by weighing up costs versus time versus risks versus legality. Won’t be surprised that they even considered making ~~bribes~~ political donations to get it done faster.
The paperwork can't show a problem because they didn't make any paperwork. And they are required to make the paperwork and they know that they were required because they asked the authorities if they could just skip it and got rejected.
Google should just purchase and protect 3,000 hectares in another area as a sort of offset. For a few million bucks they could establish a park/reserve that would forever be protected. It heads off bad publicity by at least providing a positive impact
This isn’t necessarily about the loss of the trees, but cutting them down possibly without an environmental study. The logging and loss of a large block of trees might effect the nearby agricultural land, the water plane, rivers/flooding, displaced wildlife might be forced into towns and crops etc
Just a note that forestry in Finland is managed, this means it is planted and harvested on a rotating basis. There seems to have been a huge messup here without securing the proper permits first. But any reporting you read describing it as an environmental problem will be nonsense as the trees would have been harvested at some point anyway.
However I understand that data-centres have become a political issue, and therefore my facts will be meaningless to a half of readers.
yeah I was wondering about this since when I looked on the map the "forest" area in question appears to be rather new and was clearly part of a reforestation effort also the first thing I saw when randomly looked at the street view in the area was logging trucks harvesting the trees.
The raw timber was never the issue here. The environmental impact is, and exactly why this is major news now.
Removing forest soil has exposed anaerobic soil layers to oxygen. It also causes rainfall to flood into nearby freshwater. The Oulujoki river basin is now facing contamination with acidic runoff and sedimentation.
Uncontrolled hydrological changes may have an irreversible environmental impact. Similar destruction of hydrological environments was huge news in 2024, when a forestry corporation destroyed the habitat of endangered freshwater pearl mussels.
People in Finland don't take irreversible environmental damage lightly.
The site is roughly here, for anyone who wants to judge for themselves whether clear-cutting forests is a local custom or whether every Finnish tree is sacred.
It would be nice if the article referenced any plans of offsetting the removal by planting elsewhere, or any plans of replanting trees at the site after construction.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 16.4 ms ] threadSad.
And they're doing something valuable to society by developing undeveloped land.
This article has better images of the actual site as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...
A datacentre is not valuable to anyone other than the owner.
Trees > Datacentre, get your environmental priorities straight.
Do you deny climate change too?
Can't wait until we get rid of all this undeveloped forests for more buildings and roads!
> She is asking the LVV to halt the entire construction site so that authorities can determine whether Google tried to bring the forest down without first obtaining formal approval.
In the US, if you want to build a shed in the middle of a wetland, you need to go through an arduous permitting process and are unlikely to gain approval. If you want to build it within 100 feet, you can probably do it, but you need to confer with the relevant DEC to show that you won't negatively impact the wetland during construction. If you're more than 100 feet away, you don't even need to talk to the DEC, because you're not in protected land.
Of course, if the DEC decides they don't think your shed is outside the 100 ft adjacent area, they may decide to do a demarcation and figure out exactly where your shed is relative to the wetland, and if you messed up you're in trouble. But if they send out a biologist to demarcate the wetland and you're far enough away, you're fine.
So many people, if they think it's ambiguous, will take the time to go through an abbreviated permitting process to get a certificate of "no permit needed", to save themselves the headache later on.
If you go through a process like this, chances are people with local expertise will tell you you're wasting your time -- the case looks pretty clear cut, and hardly anyone ever has trouble in such circumstances. The clerk at the department responsible for issuing the "no permit needed" certificate may tell you you're wasting everyone's time.
But if you're a big corporation like Google, you don't really have an excuse not to do it. You can afford the lawyers, you can afford to plan years in advance, and so many more people are going to notice if you skip steps. Even if you end up being in the legal clear, no permit was needed, you're so much better off getting it in writing in advance.
Thanks to the increased usage of data centers, here we have widespread deforestation to clear the way to building more homes for AI agents.
And little to no-one cares.
I'd say you thought right HN is generally against climate change but I'm not sure where you got the idea little to no-one cares.
300 hectares of clearing against 22.5 million hectares of total forest.
It's nothing. Not "widespread"
If it's found they really did skip the required steps then I hope there is actual action about it.
As for scaling massive amounts of solar/wind... that's exactly what China is doing to power their infrastructure buildouts.
The middle of nowhere in Finland is likely to be a forest (about 80% coverage).
The area being developed is roughly here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/f5vn3KaZ1eZEcNh67?g_st=ic
How I managed to imagine it is that it is roughly the size of the Central Park in New York.
It turns out there's something much weirder going on.
Here's an earlier article by Agence France-Presse ("AFP is one of the world's three major news agencies, and the only European one."): https://web.archive.org/web/20261004152900/https://www.afp.c...
And look at this:
>> "In our view, operations at this construction site should be suspended until it is clarified whether the project is in compliance with the law," Hanna Halmeenpaa, chair of the board of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, who filed the request with the agency, told AFP at the edge of the deforested area.
>> "From the satellite images, we've seen that nature sites which should be preserved have also been logged," she added, explaining that the size of the clear-cut area was comparable to 420 football fields.
I just can't bring myself to believe that a Finnish bureaucrat, speaking to a French news agency, explained that the area in question was comparable in size to 420 football fields.
And in fact the numbers don't seem to work. The area is estimated at "more than 300 hectares". 420 football fields is more like 224 hectares.
On the other hand, 420 soccer pitches would total 299.9 hectares. This tells us some interesting things:
1. The area in question may be "more than 300 hectares", but it's also less than 307 hectares (which could fit 430 soccer pitches). Or, alternatively, zero effort was made to express the actual cleared area in terms of soccer pitches, and it was first rounded to 300 hectares and then the rounded figure was converted to soccer pitches. (Which I have to assume was done by AFP and not by the Finnish government.)
2. Either the "global audience" that TechSpot serves doesn't include the United States, or they copied a French agency's English-language press release without bothering to consider whether any of the numbers in it made sense.
A 1G$ per hectare seems a good deterrent for Google.
Here is the 300G$ bill.
They say Finland has over 22 million hectares of forested land https://fra-data.fao.org/assessments/fra/latest/FIN/home/ove...
So Google reduced the forested land by 0.00000013%
I'm so tired of every news outlet trying to turn everything datacenter related into a panic-worthy event.
The real story is a debate about whether they followed the right procedures. Google says they did. The chair of a Finnish Nature Conservation Association says maybe they didn't:
> She is asking the LVV to halt the entire construction site so that authorities can determine whether Google tried to bring the forest down without first obtaining formal approval.
So they want to halt construction to determine if any permitting approval wasn't done appropriately? This is getting so much press that I assumed they had actual evidence that this was illegal, not just someone's suspicion and request to investigate.
Edit: One source in English but even this is a while ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvj6jkx6g1r0o
Hacker news strikes again with mathematical genius tier logic...
If I kill your first born son that's only like 0.00000013% of the mass of living creating, who cares right?
Google bulldozing a square mile of trees is not comparable to normal forestry operations, because they are not replacing it with trees. They are replacing it with a massive concrete building which will produce loads of heat and suck up loads of local power and water.
This is why there is outrage, not because they are destroying the trees but what they are doing in the place of them.
Forest loss in Finland has averaged about 243,000 hectares per year in recent years through 2025
Finland has 20.3 million to 26.3 million hectares of forestry and forest land depending on the classification used.
The United States has a gross forest loss of about 3 million acres per year, which is largely offset by 2.6 million acres of non-forest-to-forest conversion.
Brazil cleared 985,000 hectares of forest last year.
India approved the diversion of 26,858 hectares of forest last year.
Google cut corners here, and didn't ask for the needed permissions. And the prime minister doesn't want to show his conversation with Google regarding this.
People are really pissed.
Edit: and the electricity prices are going up due to these data centers. And the profits from them don't stay in Finland, but go to American corporations. There should be Finnish data centers owned by Finns instead of having Google to take the cheap electricity and taking profits out.
I'm glad this one is getting attention, though. May the Finnish people show us how we can get it right.
There are a lot of people who are against this, and protest against this. Looking at the polls, seems that it will change in the next elections, like a lot.
Local politicians though? Oh boy. Seems like every time there's some ongoing project in a smaller municipality involving commercial exploitation of natural resources(like undeveloped land, minerals, hydropower capacity, etc) there's a mayor and/or municipal council members who profit from it financially or otherwise. They have shares/board seats in a holding company owning the land, local contractors, etc. Seems like this is very widespread, and rarely leads to serious consequences, and even when it does, it happens so late that the project is already built, or so far underway it doesn't get stopped. Shit pisses me off.
I'm sure data centres are no different. Because I can't imagine a cost-benefit analysis of them that makes any sense from the point of view of the local community.
People say that, but users are the ones capturing most if not almost all of the profit.
You don't cut Anthropic a check every time a new user signs up on your platform. You pay them a small slice of the revenue that their models generate for you.
We see this pretty much everywhere now, where resources are extracted and given to the wealthy.
Got source for this? My impression is that base loads decrease power prices. Has something changed?
Google DID apply for the right permissions, and they even had a consultant on the ground with years of experience who was supposed to navigate these complexities ... and even WITH all that, you get the result of idiots saying "Google BYPASSED OUR LAWS!!!!!"
Sit in the shoes of a Google lawyer trying to navigate all of this nonsense. Why is there not one government entity telling Google, okay, you need to do XYZ to do this. Instead, they got the ok from several Finnish agencies to go ahead. And then, even as a surprise to the exiting Finnish government agencies they were working with, yet ANOTHER agency shows up and says OH YOU DIDNT DO ABCDEFGHIJK steps.
You people are just ridiculous.
Not that interesting. They are doing it illegally. And there is a pattern of builders of AI data centers ignoring the local law.
It makes it news. It makes it relevant and actual.
What do you find so "interesting"?
Loss of forests affects us all. And they’re not as renewable as people think.
with that said, ~ 80% of forest loss is due to livestock. we export most of our meat. now a bunch of moralist are worried with their bellies full of cheese and meat
I don't think those are necessarily fair comparisons either. Countries like Brazil and India may not have the same regulatory strength as countries in the EU and perhaps public appetite is not as sensitive to such matters either. Finland is well known for being very protective of their natural areas.
Here in the US, I've seen it make news when a neighbor cuts down a few trees on another neighbors property without permission. That doesn't make it any less valid of an issue than a company razing down acres worth.
> There are a lot of entities clearing lots of forest every day. Interesting that this one makes news.
Are you approaching this from the angle that we shouldn't be making this a big deal because we don't for the others? Because I would approach it from the opposite direction: we should make the others just as big (if not bigger) a deal as this.
Perhaps the same applies to trees.
1) Start an investigation into deforestation, leading to the discovery of the deforestation caused by this datacenter?
2) Start an investigation into anything that maligns datacenters?
The title: Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest for a data center, and regulators want answers
The opening sentence: Finland's regulator says the environmental review came too late, Google says it followed the law
I'm going with option #1 here because the article represents both sides here equally and makes no claims that laws were broken, only that an investigation is underway. Point me to where it indicates #2 for you.
-The amount of deforestation discussed in this article is miniscule compared to the global amount. The probability of the journalist investigating or the editor of the outlet deciding to platform this specific case by uniformly random chance is small.
-Negative news stories about datacenters, AI, tech, etc. are extremely common and highly engaging. The probability of a journalist/editor deciding to specifically seek out an anti-datacenter story is high.
Given these two priors, what do you think the journalists most likely motivations are (or do you disagree with my claims)? You were able to deduce my own motivations for posting, can you do the same for the news outlet?
And in order to not be a bad faith actor myself, let me clarify my motivations for posting: I am here to express dissatisfaction with an unreasonable amount of anti-datacenter bias in the media.
By that logic, why not cut half of Finland's forests? I'm sure they won't mind since it's such a small area globally after all. And I think there are also other nuances than just net loss of forest.
Are we still pretending people love technological megacorps, LLMs and datacenters?
There is nothing interesting nor perplexing lmao
An unfathomable amount of burning. The worst in history and yes the government numbers are drastically understated, probably intentionally because they get a vast amount of foreign funding to protect the rainforest in the country.
The media plays trends, not importance.
Google cut 200 hectares, the requirement for environmental study was 150. It’s likely many Finnish companies exceeds the same threshold everyday without questions.
Are you citing Finnish law here? Because where I live, this is not true. If you buy forest land, you're buying a lot of responsibilities along with it. You can mine the forest for wood some, but within parameters that ensure you won't kill it.
This is false. In Finland by default: 1) you must file a notice of any major logging in advance; 2) you need to plant the same amount of trees that you cut; and 3) zoning, key habitats or environmental impact completely prevent logging in many areas even if the land is privately owned.
This came up on HN just a few days ago. We learned there that the logging is completely legal as long as new trees are planted afterwards.
So the timeline looks like this:
1. Google applies for construction permits. These would make it legal to log the trees and then not plant new trees.
2. Google logs the trees.
--- present day ---
3(a). Google receives construction permits, and doesn't plant new trees; or
3(b). Google doesn't receive construction permits, and plants new trees.
There is no potential future that would put them in violation of the law. What was the problem?
There are two things that Google would’ve been allowed to legally do:
* Log the trees for economic use, then plant new ones on the same property, definitely not do terrain alterations. But obviously that’s not what they wanted to do, they wanted to build a data center.
* Log less than 150 hectares, do any earthmoving etc needed within that area, build a data center.
These are mutually exclusive operations.
There’s no world in which Google would’ve been allowed to log the 300 hectares and do all the other preparative work on the property that they’ve done. They were told that they need a YVA (evaluation of environmental impact) process before doing anything beyond some very light reversible preparations because the area they wanted to modify exceeded 150 ha.
Somehow, even with the ability to hire the best lawyers in the country, they either fucked up and misunderstood the relevant legislation and the quite clear communication from LVV, the govt office responsible, or they just ignored all that and reasoned that they can get away with it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50050097
>> 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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50051670
>> Either way, you need to complete the EIA [environmental impact assessment]. It'd probably show that this was, indeed, a good location for a DC [data center]. 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 [sic]. But even with that tail risk realizing the likely outcome is that permits pass and prep is done.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062379
>> 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."
---
The takeaway appears to be that LVV hasn't actually stated what they think the problem is, but they want to do an investigation, and that cutting down the trees poses no legal problems. At least, according to local regulators. If doing some earthwork between logging and sowing is a problem, there seems to be no mention of the fact anywhere, including in statements by the agency that wants to stop the development.
Forest loss in Finland - 243,000 hectares = 600,000 acres
Finland total - 20.3-26.3 million hectares = 50-65 million acres
US forest loss - 1.2M hectares = 3M acres US forest conversions - 1.05M hectares = 2.6M acres
Brazil - 985k hectares = 2.43M acres India - 26,858 hectares = 66,368 acres
Google probably even factored in the expected fine versus having the data centre done X months/years earlier compared to completing all the red tape in due course.
That’s how corps make profit: by weighing up costs versus time versus risks versus legality. Won’t be surprised that they even considered making ~~bribes~~ political donations to get it done faster.
This is not a data center, this is a data town.
However I understand that data-centres have become a political issue, and therefore my facts will be meaningless to a half of readers.
Removing forest soil has exposed anaerobic soil layers to oxygen. It also causes rainfall to flood into nearby freshwater. The Oulujoki river basin is now facing contamination with acidic runoff and sedimentation.
Uncontrolled hydrological changes may have an irreversible environmental impact. Similar destruction of hydrological environments was huge news in 2024, when a forestry corporation destroyed the habitat of endangered freshwater pearl mussels.
People in Finland don't take irreversible environmental damage lightly.
Forest is much much more than culture in terms of biodiversity.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/R4V8%2BW2C,+91500+Tahvola,...
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It would be nice if the article referenced any plans of offsetting the removal by planting elsewhere, or any plans of replanting trees at the site after construction.