Google has submitted a building permit application for a second site with data centers in our country. This will go beyond the location in St. Ghislain and will house three data centers in the future.

Google wants to build up to three new data centers in our country in the long term. In 2021, the internet giant bought a plot of land near Charleroi, in Farciennes. This is the poorest commune in Wallonia. Google has now submitted a building permit for the first data center, Mayor Hugues Bayet said via Belga. The data center must have an area of ​​7,500 square meters and should be completed in 2025.

The other two data centers will be even larger with 20,000 and 30,000 square meters. There are no concrete plans or timetables for the construction yet. The new data center will be Google’s sixth in our country. Since 2005, the company has had a strong presence in Belgium and particularly in Saint-Ghislain. There are now five Google data centers there.

Ecological Impact

At the new location, Google would have an electricity capacity of 200 MW to 300 MW at its disposal. Water to cool the servers would come from the wells of the Sambre. Data centers are not traditionally the most economical or ecological builds, but Google will do its best to limit the environmental impact. For example, the company provides solar panels, batteries and a well thought-out water use strategy. The batteries will have to replace classic diesel generators: a trick that Google has already used in its other Belgian data centers. The heat generated by the data center is fed into a heating network by the local inter-municipal company Igretec.

The cost of the new data center has so far been estimated at 600 million euros. Despite this investment, the website is not a job cannon. Google anticipates 400 direct and indirect jobs, which is comparable to St. Ghislain’s employment.