Two data centers are being fought in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. At Alixan in the Drôme, on the Rovaltain site beside the Valence TGV station, the Marseille startup Sesterce had a permit for an AI data center of 40 megawatts of power, expandable to 80, until a judge in Grenoble suspended it on July 10, 2026. Near Lyon, the investor DC Max and Abu Dhabi's Phoenix Group plan an 18-megawatt AI data center at Dardilly, with works due to start in late September 2026 and last 18 months.
At Alixan, a collective called Assez DataCenters, made up of six environmental groups and neighbors, challenged the permit. The judge found the project should have had an environmental impact study and could raise temperatures within 200 meters of the site; work has stopped until a full ruling, which can take years. On July 27 Sesterce said it had appealed to the Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court.
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At Dardilly the permit was signed in January 2025 under the previous council. A petition from the group Nature Dardilly asking for an environmental inquiry has passed 21,000 signatures, in a town of about 9,000. "It uses a lot of energy, it will make noise," said founder Françoise Perraud, whose group wants it moved to an industrial zone. Mayor Patrice Crosnier says it meets environmental rules and has promised a public meeting with the investor this fall; no date has been set.
France 3 reports another data center under construction at Meyzieu, east of Lyon. The grid operator RTE says data centers have reserved about 1.3 gigawatts of grid capacity in the region, about half of all new requests.
Projects not tied to an area
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Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes1
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sesterce · Alixan | Sesterce | Blocked | 60 MW |
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