Google has filed to build a new data center campus in Belgium.
First announced by Hugues Bayet, mayor of the municipality of Farciennes, the search and cloud company is planning to develop three facilities at the Ecopôle business park in Wallonia.
“Google at the Ecopole, it's concrete! A new milestone has been reached: the permit application has just been submitted to the Municipal Administration!” Bayet said last week.
The campus will span some 53,000 sqm (570,500 sq ft). Construction will start at the end of the year and will open in 2025. The first phase will span around 7,500 sqm (80,730 sq ft).
Bayet said the campus would include photovoltaic panels and heat recovery in order to power an urban heat network.
Google acquired 53 hectares of land in the Ecopôle eco-business park, located across the municipalities of Farciennes, Aiseau-Presles, and Sambreville, in 2019. According to previous reports, energy firm Elia has confirmed that 200-300MW of capacity would be available on the site.
Belgium’s Saint Ghislain was the site of Google’s first data center in Europe. The company has built five data centers at its 90-hectare Saint-Ghislain site since 2009 as well as a solar plant. The company uses the shell company Crystal Computing for much of its dealings in Belgium.
Last year also saw Google acquire a 36-hectare site located in Ecaussinnes, in Hainaut province, in the Feluy industrial zone near La Louvière.