Recently, the prefect of Seine-et-Marne approved the construction of a massive data center project in Fouju, a small town in Île-de-France near Melun. This project, called Campus IA, involves building 11 data center buildings on a 90-hectare site. It is backed by an international consortium that includes the Emirati investment fund MGX, American tech giant Nvidia, French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI, and the French state-backed investment bank Bpifrance. Once completed, the data center is expected to be the largest in Europe, with a power capacity of 1.4 gigawatts—equivalent to the output of a nuclear reactor. Construction will begin in phases, starting in 2028 and expected to finish by 2038. Despite the project's potential economic benefits, it has sparked significant opposition. Local residents, farmers, and environmental groups have formed a collective called Stop Campus IA and launched a petition on the GreenVoice platform. The petition has already collected 52,000 signatures out of a goal of 75,000. Opponents are concerned about the environmental impact, including the risk of a heat island effect, potential leaks of refrigerants containing PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are harmful to human health and the environment, and the large amount of water required for cooling systems. They also worry that the project will cover fertile agricultural land in the Bordes ZAC with concrete and could raise the local temperature in the Melun area by nearly 2 degrees Celsius. The scale of Campus IA is far greater than that of typical large data centers, which usually consume between 20 and 50 megawatts of power. Similar concerns were raised in New York in July 2026, when authorities temporarily halted the issuance of new environmental permits for projects requiring more than 50 megawatts. This decision was made in response to growing environmental and community concerns about the impact of large-scale data centers. The Campus IA project, with its 1.4 gigawatt capacity, is expected to be among the largest in the world, comparable to similar projects in the United States and China. The project highlights the increasing demand for data storage and processing, driven by the growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. However, it also raises critical questions about balancing technological advancement with environmental sustainability and community well-being. As the project moves forward, it will be important to monitor how these concerns are addressed and whether the environmental and social impacts are adequately managed.