A 22-Year Contract For Half A Reactor
Google's cloud division signed a 22-year power purchase agreement with Finnish utility Fortum on September 9, its first nuclear contract in Europe. The deal covers up to 50 percent of the output from the Loviisa nuclear plant, a two-reactor site on Finland's south coast running since 1977 that currently supplies about 10 percent of the country's electricity. Google starts buying power at a reduced share in 2028, rising to the full 50 percent allocation from 2030 through the contract's end in 2049.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2027-2028 | Google deploys its 13 billion euro Finland infrastructure investment |
| 2028 | Google's Loviisa power purchase begins at a reduced share |
| 2030 | Google's share rises to up to 50 percent of Loviisa output |
| 2049 | The 22-year power purchase agreement ends |
| 2050 | Fortum's existing operating license for Loviisa expires |
The power purchase sits inside a wider announcement: Google will invest at least 13 billion euro in Finnish AI infrastructure between 2027 and 2028, its largest single commitment in Europe, spread across data center sites in Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala. Alongside the nuclear deal, Google signed new onshore wind agreements with Valorem and Suomen Hyotytuuli covering 629 megawatts, and contracted a 94 megawatt battery storage system near Kajaani due online in late 2027.
The License Already Said 2050. The Money Did Not.
Fortum's own account of the deal contains an odd detail for a plant that already has permission to keep running for another quarter century. Finland's government granted Loviisa an operating license through the end of 2050 back in February 2023. Yet Fortum CEO Markus Rauramo says the two reactors could not have kept operating past 2030 without a roughly 1 billion euro life-extension investment, and it is Google's 22-year revenue commitment that makes that investment bankable now rather than later or never.
That is the opposite of the story AI data centers usually generate. The standard complaint is that hyperscaler power demand strains an already stretched grid. Here, a hyperscaler's purchase contract is the thing keeping a nuclear plant online that would otherwise have shut down years before its own paperwork said it could. Google calls it the company's first partnership anywhere in the world to fund nuclear life extension and capacity uprates, not just in Europe.
What This Means For Everyone Else On Finland's Grid
Fingrid, Finland's grid operator, welcomed the deal for a reason that matters to anyone else running a factory or a server room in the Nordics. CEO Asta Sihvonen-Punkka said the new capacity at these northern sites supports cost-effective grid development for everyone connected to it, not only Google. But half of one of the country's largest generation assets is now under a single 22-year contract to a single AI buyer, a claim on capacity that a Finnish steelmaker or a foreign-owned paper mill on the same grid did not have to negotiate against five years ago.
For a manufacturer or a data center operator weighing a Nordic site against cheaper power elsewhere, the honest read is that Finland's low-cost nuclear-and-wind grid is not shrinking, but a growing share of its newest, most reliable capacity is now spoken for on multi-decade AI contracts. Budget accordingly, and ask any Finnish or Baltic power supplier directly what share of their contracted capacity, if any, already competes with Google's before signing a long-term agreement of your own.
Read next: Google Hedged Its Gas Bet With a Geothermal One | Finland Just Made Data-Centre Power 45x Pricier
