Google has broken ground on a data center campus in Westpoort, Netherlands.
In a LinkedIn post, Google’s senior operations manager Jayesh Desai confirmed that the construction of Google’s fourth Dutch data center had begun.
Located in the Dutch municipality of Groningen, the tech giant has invested more than €600 million ($643m) into the build at the Westpoort industrial estate.
The company says its investment will create 125 new jobs and has pledged to prioritize sustainability.
Google first bought the 20-hectare plot in 2022, with plans to build a data center spanning eight hectares on the land. Further details have not yet been shared.
In total, Google has invested more than €3.8 billion ($4bn) in data centers and digital infrastructure in the Netherlands.
Earlier this year, Google announced a Power Purchase Agreement with the Crosswind and Ecowende joint ventures, operators of windfarms, for 479MW. Together, with existing initiatives in the Netherlands, these projects plan to ensure Google’s Netherlands data centers use more than 90 percent carbon-free energy.
The search and cloud giant said it aims to invest in local water management projects in Groningen to return an average of 120 percent of water used in data centers by 2030.
Groningen was exempt from the country’s hyperscale moratorium back in 2022 and is also home to Google’s third data center in the Winschoten area, where construction began at the end of last year.
Google currently has two live data centers in the Netherlands. The first is located in Eemshaven in Groningen, where Google invested in a water treatment plant to supply canal water to its data center for cooling and to other industrial consumers in the region.
The second data center opened in 2020 in Middenmeer just north of Amsterdam.
Google operates more than 135 data centers spanning the US, Canada, Asia, Europe, and South America.
QTS and NorthC also operate data centers in the Groningen area.