Campus IA in Fouju: The Project in Brief

Campus IA plans eleven data-center buildings in Fouju, in Seine-et-Marne. The buildings would contain servers, their electrical supply, and cooling systems to provide computing capacity, including for artificial-intelligence services. Here, “campus” means an industrial site rather than a school or university.

Campus IA is the name of the project. Campus AI is the company behind it. Its participants are MGX, Bpifrance, Mistral AI, and NVIDIA. Fouju has 655 residents and lies southeast of Paris.

On July 29, 2026, the Seine-et-Marne prefect authorized DC1, DC2, and DC4. These names identify three buildings in the same project. None is operating yet. On August 28, the municipality announced the start of phase-one construction, beginning with site fencing, biodiversity-protection measures, and continuing archaeological work.

The project today

The environmental filing covers the complete campus. The July 2026 decisions authorize only DC1, DC2, and DC4 to operate their regulated installations. The remaining eight buildings will require separate decisions. Authorization does not mean a building has been constructed or entered service.

The documents use several schedules. The impact assessment separates three construction periods, while RTE describes two grid-connection steps. Prefectural decisions follow another sequence, one building at a time. Treating all three as a single “phase” would misstate the project’s status.

Size, power, and electricity use

Topic	Figure or commitment	What the record establishes
Site	Roughly 90 hectares and 11 buildings	Planned full-campus design
Computing	848 MW IT	Equipment assessed in the environmental filing
Grid	Up to 1.4 GW	Maximum connection planned with RTE
Electricity	More than 10 TWh per year at full scale	Forecast, not metered use
Investment	Up to €50 billion; about €8 billion to €8.5 billion for phase one	Announcement and public-file estimates
Current authorization	DC1, DC2, and DC4	Three buildings, not the complete campus
Employment	500 direct and more than 1,000 indirect jobs at full development; about 1,000 people during construction	Government estimates, not audited outcomes

The 848 MW of IT equipment and the 1.4 GW maximum grid connection measure different things. The first figure covers servers assessed in the environmental filing. The second sets a connection ceiling for the site and its supporting systems. Neither is observed electricity use.

Electricity, water, biodiversity, and local impacts

Electricity and carbon

The filing forecasts more than 10 TWh of annual electricity use at full scale. The impact assessment estimates 38.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over 50 years, an arithmetic mean of 0.766 million tonnes per year, with 63% attributed to electricity. The regional environmental authority asks for a broader accounting boundary. These are scenario estimates. Actual consumption, load profile, electricity mix, and carbon intensity will only become observable through operating data.

Water and cooling

Campus AI commits to dry, air-based cooling for phase one and no operational withdrawal from the Champigny aquifer. Dry cooling reduces one direct water pathway, but it does not prove a zero water footprint for construction, electricity generation, maintenance, or later phases. The commitment needs to be checked against the final design and measured withdrawals.

Biodiversity

The inventory cited by the regional environmental authority records 61 bird species, two protected amphibian species, nine protected bat species, and 140 plant species. The record documents the initial survey and planned mitigation. It cannot yet establish whether those measures will protect populations and habitats after construction.

Refrigerant, noise, and air quality

The design inventories 514.3 tonnes of R-1234ze refrigerant and models about 15 tonnes of annual leakage under a 3% assumption. The potential degradation pathway to TFA is distinct from proof of measured local contamination or health effects. Noise and emissions from backup generators also depend on tests and operating conditions that do not yet exist as public results.

Waste heat, jobs, and local effects

Waste-heat recovery

French law and the project documents frame waste-heat recovery as an objective, but useful delivery requires identified customers, a network, contracts, and viable temperatures. The public record does not yet establish delivered heat.

Jobs and local economic effects

Employment and local-economic figures are projections. Audited outcomes would need to separate phase, occupation, residence, duration, procurement, tax revenue, and other local spending.

What is established and what is missing

The documents do not all provide the same kind of information. An administrative authorization, a developer commitment, an estimate, and an operating measurement support different conclusions.

Status	What it means	What it does not mean
Authorization granted	An item appears in an administrative decision.	It is already built or operating.
Developer commitment	Campus AI or RTE describes a future design or action.	The result has been verified in operation.
Modelled estimate	A calculation applies assumptions to a future scenario.	The value has been measured on site.
Information unavailable	The data is not yet public or measurable.	The eventual result is positive or negative.

Before the campus operates, the public record cannot yet establish:

• annual metered electricity use or hourly carbon intensity;
• final direct and indirect water consumption;
• measured refrigerant leakage, TFA deposition, or local health effects;
• biodiversity outcomes after the planned mitigation measures;
• delivered waste heat or contracted customers;
• audited employment, procurement origin, or local spending;
• tax receipts retained by each local authority;
• the final distribution of grid costs.

The primary records are the prefectural decisions, the April 2026 opinion of the regional environmental authority, the public-inquiry register, the CNDP consultation archive, and RTE’s connection announcement.

The Campus IA source dossier contains the detailed analysis, stakeholder positions, sources, and open questions. I will update it when new decisions or operating data become public.