Google Chateauroux data center, Indre, Centre-Val de Loire

Google's planned data center in Etrechet, near Chateauroux in the Indre department of France, has cost the small town its mayor. Florence Laurent resigned on September 15, 2026, saying the council had been told days earlier that the project would go ahead regardless of residents' concerns, after her three deputy mayors and a councillor had already quit in protest. The data center would rise on about 195 hectares of the Ozans business zone, with eight to ten buildings and new high-voltage power lines, and would need more than 500 megawatts of power.

Laurent listed visual nuisance, water contamination from PFAS chemicals, falling home values and road traffic as issues still without firm commitments from the developers. Four Etrechet councillors who resigned a day earlier said the project escapes any real decision by the town while bringing heavy risks to water, the power grid and daily life, and questioned the independence of studies done on it. They said Gil Averous, president of the Chateauroux metropolitan area, had warned he would not take account of an unfavorable result in any local referendum on the project.

Google's subsidiary Tricolore Computing signed a five year promise to buy the land from Chateauroux Metropole on July 5, 2025, for a reported 58.5 million euros, with construction meant to start in 2029. Grid operator RTE plans to double the high-voltage line between the Eguzon dam and Marmagne to supply enough power, a nearly 300 million euro project not expected to start before 2032. Google told the Multinationals Observatory the project remains in its very early stages, with no details yet on its timeline, cooling technology or energy sources.

About 250 people protested outside Chateauroux city hall on June 30, 2026, as metropolitan councillors voted to double the power line serving the site. The regional Green party's climate vice president, Jeremie Godet, has warned that air cooling could use PFAS-emitting refrigerants and create a heat island near the Chateauroux forest; Averous says the waste heat could instead warm market garden greenhouses and dry alfalfa. Averous says the Ozans project has always had the backing of Etrechet and the metropolitan area's other towns whenever it came up for a vote.

France's National Commission for Public Debate named the guarantors for a preliminary public consultation in April 2026; Averous expected it to happen in October 2026. A public inquiry follows later in the process, and Google has said it will not proceed before obtaining building permits.