Singapore-based developer DayOne has announced plans to build a new data center in Nurmijärvi, north of Helsinki, adding to a pipeline that is already straining regional grids and planning authorities.
The project centers on the Sudentulli planning area, municipally owned land that has been under structured development since early 2024. Fortum’s initial planning reservation agreement with Nurmijärvi covered zoning, marketing, and grid connection support, a combination increasingly seen as decisive for international data center investors facing long lead times across Europe. The newly signed site development agreement with DayOne formalizes the transition from site preparation to investor-led execution, while a preliminary land sale process between the municipality and DayOne is now underway.
From a market perspective, the most consequential element is not the announcement itself but the timeline compression implied by Fortum’s role. According to Fortum, early-stage zoning and grid readiness can accelerate data center deployment by one to four years. In a sector where power availability is often the binding constraint, this claim aligns with broader European experience, particularly in markets such as Ireland and the Netherlands where grid congestion has effectively halted new approvals.
Finland’s appeal rests heavily on its electricity mix. The country already sources a majority of its power from low-carbon generation, including nuclear, hydro, and wind, which allows developers to market facilities as low-emission by design. However, the rapid clustering of hyperscale and colocation projects has begun to shift the risk profile from generation to transmission and local grid capacity. While Fortum’s agreement includes grid connection support, no public figures have yet been disclosed on the site’s contracted capacity, load profile, or phasing strategy, leaving open questions about how incremental demand will be managed in practice.
For Fortum, the Nurmijärvi project fits squarely within its stated strategy of enabling electrification and decarbonization in energy-intensive industries. Importantly, the company has emphasized that the site development agreement carries no material earnings impact, underscoring that its value lies in long-term customer relationships and positioning rather than near-term financial returns. This mirrors a broader trend among Nordic utilities, which increasingly act as facilitators of industrial electrification rather than sole asset owners.
DayOne’s entry into Finland also highlights intensifying competition among global developers for Nordic sites. Singapore-based operators have been particularly active in Northern Europe, attracted by cooler climates that reduce cooling loads and by regulatory frameworks that are still more permissive than in many Western European markets. Yet this influx raises policy questions at the municipal level, especially around land use, waste heat utilization, and the opportunity cost of allocating grid capacity to data centers versus manufacturing or hydrogen production.
The Nurmijärvi case illustrates how municipalities are becoming central actors in the data center value chain. By owning and pre-developing land, local authorities can shape project timelines and conditions, but they also assume reputational and political risk if grid impacts or local benefits fail to materialize. While DayOne and Fortum emphasize digitalization and low-carbon energy, the absence of disclosed metrics on energy efficiency, heat recovery, or long-term power sourcing agreements makes it difficult to assess how the project compares with best-in-class European benchmarks.
