Google recently received permission from the Walloon province of Hainaut in Belgium to build three data centres. The exact location is the municipality of Farciennes. This should eventually create 800 jobs.
With the construction of the new data centre in Farciennes, Google is doubling its data centre locations in the province of Hainaut, VRT NWS reports. The tech giant has already a data centre location in the municipality of Saint-Ghislain in the Walloon province since 2010. In this data centre, Google has invested nearly 3 billion euros uptill this point. It also provides employment for more than 400 employees.
Requirement: energy neutral
However, the future data centre location in Farciennes must meet a number of requirements by the Walloon provincial government. Google must make its data centre “green” in terms of the environment and mobility, but also at the landscape level.
For example, the installation of solar panels must ensure that the energy consumed at the data centre site is 90 percent CO2 neutral by 2025. By 2023, it should even be 95 percent. Google must also eventually adopt more sustainable cooling technology for its data centres, the Walloon government says.
For Google, those requirements will fit well with the company’s own environmental goals. Just recently, it announced that it had signed a new agreement with Aspiravi and Luminus in Belgium to support those parties’ onshore wind farms. The company’s offices and data centres in Belgium will thus use 80 percent carbon-free energy.
800 jobs
Farciennes is the poorest municipality within the Walloon province of Hainaut. Therefore, Google’s arrival is of interest to the municipality. There will be built three data centers on behalf of the tech giant. The locations should provide work for 400 direct jobs and an equal number of indirect jobs. In total, there will be 800 new jobs.
Also read: Google makes data centres in Europe run on carbon-free energy