Controversial AI Data Centers in France: The Map of 'Computing Factories', and Bitcoin Still on the Sidelines

Gigawatts for AI, suspicions for Bitcoin. A wheat field in Seine-et-Marne, agricultural land along the Rhine, a village in Indre where the town hall is emptying of its elected officials. Across France, giant data center projects dedicated to artificial intelligence are facing the anger of local residents. After the Condat paper mill near Lascaux, it is now the turn of Google, Microsoft, Sesterce, and the AI Campus of Fouju to confront petitions, resignations, and legal challenges.

These campuses demand gigawatts, and the state is opening the door wide for them. Bitcoin mining could, however, relieve the French network, but it is still waiting for the right to connect.

Key points of this article:

• In Étrechet, near Châteauroux, Google aims for up to 1.2 GW, and public consultation opens on November 2.
• The court has suspended Sesterce's permit in Drôme, while Microsoft is advancing in Alsace despite a hostile public inquiry.
• France exported 92.3 TWh in 2025 and experienced 513 hours of negative pricing, making room for miners capable of stepping back.

AI Data Centers: Google and Emiratis on the Front Line

Let's start with Indre. In Étrechet, at the gates of Châteauroux, the mayor and several elected officials returned their sashes in mid-September. According to them, the decision was being made far from the village. It must be said that the project is nothing like a sub-prefecture server room. Google is indeed preparing, through its subsidiary Tricolore Computing, a first building of 120 MW connected by 2030. The site could then rise to 1,200 MW, ten times more.

On the residents' side, fears are mounting. They dread a permanent hum, PFAS emissions (these "eternal pollutants") linked to cooling, and a transformed landscape. The petition "Ozans say no" is approaching 16,000 signatures.

And to power such a site, a network is needed. RTE must pull a 400,000-volt line over a hundred kilometers between Eguzon and Marmagne, at an estimated cost of 300 million euros. No less than 128 municipalities are located in the study area. Two consultations will thus overlap. The consultation for the line ends on November 22, while the one for the data center opens on November 2 and runs until January 10.

In Seine-et-Marne, however, the games seem to be over. The prefect signed the decree on July 29 authorizing the AI Campus of Fouju, a village of 637 inhabitants. The program is dizzying, with 1.4 GW and up to 50 billion euros backed by the Emirati fund MGX. All on nearly 89 hectares of agricultural land. The 71,625 signatures collected against the project have not changed anything, and a collective is now preparing its appeal. Fouju (Seine-et-Marne), where the 1.4 GW AI Campus was authorized by the prefecture on July 29, 2026. Source: Benjamin Smith / Wikimedia Commons, license CC BY-SA 3.0

The Judge Slows Down in Drôme, Microsoft's Data Center Moves Forward in Alsace

In Drôme, opponents have at least won a round. On July 10, the administrative court of Grenoble suspended Sesterce's construction permit in Alixan. The project aimed for over 60 MW and 1.5 billion euros of investment in the Rovaltain park. The file simply did not include an impact study, which is a problem for a project of this size.

On the banks of the Rhine, Petit-Landau and Hombourg tell the opposite story. Microsoft aims for 36 hectares currently cultivated for three buildings and 2 billion euros. According to the environmental authority (MRAe), the site will consume more than 1.5 TWh per year, equivalent to the entire photovoltaic park of Grand Est in 2024. Out of 665 contributions to the public inquiry, 535 were unfavorable. Nevertheless, the investigating commissioner issued a favorable opinion in August, with only one reservation regarding noise.

On October 12, Mulhouse Alsace Agglomeration voted for the declaration of general interest, reports AFP. However, there remains the prefectural decree and building permits, for a construction project expected in 2029. A detail that raises eyebrows among opponents is that the site plans to have 111 backup generators.

The list does not stop there. Residents are also organizing in Lezennes, near Lille, or in Oise. The Marseille collective "Le nuage était sous nos pieds" even counts 32 local oppositions in the metropolitan area.

Bitcoin Mining: The Client That Can Be Disconnected

The contentious question remains. Why does AI draw gigawatts when mining remains suspect? France does not lack electricity, far from it. It exported 92.3 TWh in 2025, a record. The market also experienced 513 hours of negative prices compared to 352 a year earlier, according to RTE's 2025 electrical report. These hours represent only about 6% of the year, but they are multiplying with the rise of solar energy. The real bottleneck lies in the lines and substations, but also in the lack of customers capable of consuming when nuclear and solar energy overflow.

However, an AI campus does exactly the opposite. It demands guaranteed power day and night and forces RTE to build lines costing several hundred million euros. A mining farm, on the other hand, consumes off-peak hours and shuts down its machines in seconds when the grid is stressed. Nevertheless, there is nothing preventing data centers from becoming more flexible. Google has already signed agreements in the United States to reduce the load of certain sites during peaks. In France, a decree from 2025 already requires large French centers to valorize their waste heat. On paper, the state would therefore have an interest in making room for miners as well. In practice, it is the data centers that it nurtures, since the simplification law adopted in 2026 allows them to be classified as "major national interest projects".

AI Data Centers or Bitcoin Mining, Each Has Its Limits

The defenders of AI campuses also have real arguments. Microsoft promises about 200 direct jobs near Mulhouse. AI has also become an issue of digital sovereignty. A mining farm employs a handful of technicians and can move its machines in a few weeks if electricity becomes cheaper elsewhere.

French miners are therefore falling back on margins. France Mining, founded by Antoine Giraud, wants to heat a food processing plant in the North with 2.4 MW of machines, then double it to 4.8 MW. The commissioning is aimed for the first quarter of 2027, subject to funding. A first installation in a vegetable greenhouse is expected to follow by the end of the year.

In Parliament, the RN had indeed submitted a bill on July 11, 2025, to experiment for five years with mining on surplus electricity. No farm has benefited from it to date. And on the ground, the collectives do not really differentiate: a miners' hangar and a campus of 1.4 GW receive the same label of "calculation factory".

The next step will be on November 9, with the meeting of the National Commission for Public Debate regarding Google's project in Châteauroux. Neither data centers nor miners will solve the saturation of RTE lines on their own. However, the former already have their status as a major national interest project. The latter are still waiting for a framework, and the proposed law on Bitcoin mining and electrical surpluses has not led to any experimentation.