Châteauroux Data Center: Google, ENGIE MoU Only Studies Heat Reuse

The release says the work would run along three lines: new renewable generation, grid integration and flexibility including battery storage (BESS), and local energy infrastructure. Both companies would also study recovering the data center's waste heat and supplying it free of charge to local heating networks or other heat users. The release gives no heat volume, no recipient and no investment figure. ENGIE adds that the identified solutions would only be developed further if the data center goes ahead.

Why the Heat Reuse Pledge Is Only a Study

The headline pledge is a study item, not a delivery contract. Nothing published sizes the heat against any network's demand. The power side is the larger question: ENGIE says new renewable capacity must not push up electricity prices for households or businesses locally or nationally, a condition that will be tested against the grid load described below.

Châteauroux Campus: Site, Grid Load and Cooling

Google's project sits in the Ozans industrial zone at Étrechet, just south of Châteauroux. According to French data-center trade magazine DCmag, the site covers about 195 to 200 hectares and would hold six to eight buildings over 10 to 20 years, down from ten in the first dossier. The first building is now pencilled in around 2030, against 2028-2029 in the referral to the national public-debate commission, the CNDP.

DCmag reports that phase one connects to RTE's 225 kV network for 120 MW, and that phase two needs a 400 kV connection and at least one more building. Final power estimates diverge, from more than 500 MW to 1.1 or 1.2 GW; Google has not set a figure in any document we read. For scale, the roughly 500 MW Google Hermantown data center in Minnesota, covered earlier by Voltgrid News, sits at the low end of that range.

Regional broadcaster ICI reported that Google plans air cooling, with about 1,000 cubic metres of water per building injected once into a closed circuit, and cites 1,800 to 2,600 permanent jobs counting direct, indirect and induced posts.

What Is Still Unconfirmed on the Project

ENGIE calls the data center a project Google "envisages", and the MoU is conditional on later agreements. A CNDP-supervised consultation runs from Nov. 2, 2026 to Jan. 10, 2027, according to ICI. The CNDP then has one month to publish its report and the project owners two months to answer open questions, before the commission gives an opinion and the permit and public-inquiry stages begin.

Heat tonnage, the heat network's owner and price, the renewable portfolio's size and the final grid load are all unpublished. Local opposition is active: ICI reports that four Étrechet municipal councillors walked out in protest at the project.