Campus IA (Fouju) data center, Île-de-France, France

Campus IA, the data center complex planned on farmland at Fouju, a village of about 650 people near Melun in Seine-et-Marne, France, won the prefect's authorisation in the summer of 2026, and a collective of associations says it will challenge it in court. The Stop IA à Fouju collective, which includes France Nature Environnement Seine-et-Marne, the bird protection league LPO, the farmers' union Confédération paysanne and the Soulèvements de la Terre, calls the public inquiry "bâclée" (rushed) and says the nuisances were minimised in the file.

The plan is for eleven buildings 20 metres high, backed by 613 generators and 680 cooling units, built in phases from 2026 to 2038, with 300 to 500 direct jobs and electricity use equal to 200,000 French households. The public inquiry ran from April 30 to May 30, 2026 and ended with a favourable opinion.

Opponents put the power demand at 1.4 gigawatts, twelve times what the surrounding community of communes uses now, and the carbon footprint at 766,000 tonnes a year, twice the area's current emissions. They also point to refrigerant gases including PFAS, noise from cooling and generators, and generator emissions near a prison under construction. A local beekeeper, Jean-Noel Peche, told Vert that residents had no say and that the choice was driven by the nearness of the motorway and the power grid.

Local officials back it. Fouju's mayor, Jonathan Wochenmayer, has said the nuisance will be far less than from earlier plans for the site that would have brought road traffic. Christian Poteau, president of the community of communes, told Vert his main condition had been that the campus take no groundwater, and that he had not given way on it.

Behind it are the French public bank Bpifrance, the Emirati fund MGX, Mistral AI and Nvidia, who announced it in May 2025 with a stated investment of 50 billion euro.

Work on the first phase was scheduled to begin in September 2026 and be delivered at the end of 2029, with further phases from 2030 to 2033 and 2034 to 2038. What happens next rests with the courts: the collective has said it intends to file a legal challenge against the prefect's authorisation, and it held a day of workshops and debates at Melun on August 29.