The search engine giant previously disclosed plans to run every office and data centre on green energy by 2030.

The expanding data centre is located in Hamina, a region on the south coast of Finland which has a large supply of renewable power, making it a perfect location for Google to push closer to its target.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Google’s global head of infrastructure strategy Ben Townsend said the tech giant was working with local authorities to feed excess heat into the network of pipes that’s used to warm up homes in the surrounding area. 

Townsend said that the technology, known as district heating, will guide the company’s future investments if it proves successful. 

“It may start to steer new site selection opportunities to locations where waste heat recovery and district heating is more readily implementable,” Townsend told Bloomberg.

In April, the search engine giant announced that it would build new data centres in Belgium and the Netherlands, as the demand for AI continues to increase.

GlobalData forecasts that the overall AI market will be worth $909bn by 2030, having grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% between 2022 and 2030.

In the GenAI space, revenues are expected to grow from $1.8bn in 2022 to $33bn in 2027, a CAGR of 80%.