Finland cannot be an involuntary driver in data and hydrogen projects

Data centers are now being built in Finland at such a pace that some of the business life’s horns have gasped for air (KL 4.5.). The price of electricity is getting more expensive. Not enough electricity. Data centers do not create jobs and they prevent investments that bring better added value.

Data center report in an interview with Kauppalehti Petteri Orpon (kok) made to the government Elisa’s former CEO Brother-Matti Mattila overcomes the biggest fears, especially about the sufficiency of electricity and the sufficiency of electrical power.

Mattila’s unspoken message is that Finland should sensibly make the most of the global data center boom, as large hydrogen-based investments are still only at the planning stage. Data and hydrogen projects are not mutually exclusive, if only Finland can play its cards right.

The big problem with the development of the hydrogen economy seems to be simply that no one has an overall picture of the projects and especially the effects of the projects – and especially not the leading politicians.

The energy department of the Ministry of Labor and the Economy leads Finland’s energy policy, but Finland would now need a strong industrial policy vision.

Network company Fingrid’s The EUR 5.2 billion investment program will certainly make it possible for a huge amount of new electricity production, consumption and storage to be added to Finland’s electricity system in the next ten years. However, the political question is where these investments are physically located.

The optimal areas for the hydrogen economy are where carbon dioxide is obtained locally, electricity is cheap, there is enough of it, and export logistics work. The drone war between Russia and Ukraine has unfortunately taken the bottom out of Eastern Finland’s projects. The defense forces’ need for radars is only increasing, which limits the investments the region needs.

The challenge of Southern Finland and Uusimaa in particular is the predicted population growth by 2040. Will there be enough electricity connection points when the needs of industry, trade, services and residents are competing for them? Many doubt it.

In this case, the direction of the investments will easily be a strip of approximately one hundred kilometers wide along the west coast from Turku to Tornio, where there is sufficient electricity production and space for investments.

Such a development could take Finland to two electricity price ranges, if industrial electricity consumption, but also production, were to be concentrated in the west. The west coast and northern Finland would be their own region, the eastern border region and southern Finland their own.

Do we want such a division politically? Hardly. The government’s energy and climate strategy remained empty. It should be supplemented with a strong industrial policy vision of what kind of industry, along with data centers, is wanted in Finland. In addition to visions, chips are needed on how they are going to be implemented.