Google told to halt work on datacentres in Finland over environmental concerns

Google has been ordered to temporarily stop work on two datacentres in Finland after failing to do the necessary environmental impact assessments on its construction sites. The planned datacentres in Muhos and Kajanni are part of a €13bn (£11bn) project across multiple sites in northern Finland by the technology company amid huge demand for space to house online infrastructure. It comes after it emerged that Tuike Finland Oy, the company representing Google, had felled 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest in Muhos without completing an environmental impact assessment (EIA). In Kajaani, the company has reportedly been logging across just under 200 hectares (494 acres) of land. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation said the sites had been reduced to "sand", blaming the oversights on the "overheated" market for new datacentres.