San Francisco Frontiers - France's data centre ambitions bump up against rural fears

Lying between the capital and the ancient royal palace at Fontainebleau, Fouju is a community of just 650 people.

But it is set to host a 50-billion-euro ($58 billion) "AI Campus" project, announced to great fanfare at a summit of government and tech leaders in the French capital early last year.

President Emmanuel Macron vaunted France's reliable nuclear power and available land for construction as he welcomed leaders to the event.

Emirati investment fund MGX, France's state investment bank, AI startup Mistral and American chipbuilder Nvidia are funding the Fouju development, whose website says it will "host next-generation computing infrastructure... for companies specialising in new technologies and developing AI".

Some locals are worried by an opinion from the regional environment authority (MRAe), which dubbed the campus a project of "extraordinary" scale.

"We're asking ourselves a lot of questions," said 68-year-old Giuliano Del Negro, who attended a recent meeting held to inform residents about the plans.

While planners say "it's all beautiful, it's all fantastic", locals fear environmental impacts, "disruption during the construction work" and potential expansion of the village with new houses or even blocks of flats, he added.

Having moved there to enjoy the countryside peace and quiet, "we'd like Foujou to stay the way it is", Del Negro said.

- New tax millions -

Another local, who only gave his name as Laurent, countered that the data centre "will generate money and jobs".

But even he baulked at the prospect of a prison supposed to be built alongside the data centre in a neighbouring municipality.

Fouju mayor Jonathan Wochenmayer said the village could take on some "sizeable projects" using the millions of euros expected to flow from the data centre each year.

For now, the municipality's annual budget amounts to just 650,000 euros, with 90 percent going towards its operating costs.

Plenty of ideas are already in the air about how to spend the windfall: new pavements, renovating the school or offering home-help services.

The project's backers also insist that the data centre, whose first phase is scheduled for completion in 2028, will create between 300 and 500 jobs.

- Power consumption -

Local environmental group FNE 77 countered in a response to the public call for comments that "the project's economic value is questionable".

"Significant" potential tax income would come "at the price of significant disruption... which has been played down" in the planning documents, the association added.

"We're not against any and all data centres, because it's true that we need them, but not monsters like this one," said FNE 77 chief Jean-Francois Dupont, who lives around 10 kilometres (six miles) from Fouju.

For him, the data centre project is born of "infatuation with all things digital" and "developing AI at breakneck speed in all directions".

Dupont is more concerned with the pollution set to be created by the site's 613 backup generators, which will need regular testing.

He fears that the data centre could also create a local hotspot in the summer months, and release so-called "forever chemicals" (PFAS) from the 680 powerful cooling systems needed to keep its servers running.

The MRAe estimated the total power consumption of the 11 planned buildings of 20 metres (65 feet) in height at around 850 megawatts -- the same as 200,000 typical French homes.

"It's a disaster, environmentally speaking," worried Eveline Biaggini, 53, a theatrical costume director and former candidate for mayor in Fouju.

Serving mayor Wochenmayer acknowledged that there was currently no plan to re-use all the heat set to be emitted by the data centre.

But he expects less disruption from the project than from alternatives proposed for the area, which would have drawn more road traffic.

"If the data centre weren't here, it would have been somewhere else. I think it will be positioned in an area that will have the least impact on the residents nearby," Wochenmayer said, highlighting the 2.8km separating the village from the site.

Nevertheless, around 100 people gathered at the end of May to hold a protest picnic against the plans.

H.Davis--SFF