Data4 has announced the creation of a new data centre campus in France, to be built on the site of the former Nokia headquarters in Nozay (Essonne). The large-scale project is also set to benefit the nearby region, with a project to re-use waste heat, hand-in-hand with the development of the nearby Nozay eco-district.
“This acquisition is part of our ambition to rapidly achieve a capacity of one gigawatt (GW) and become the pan-European benchmark in the data centre sector,” said Olivier Micheli, Data4 CEO. “In this way we are strengthening our roots in south Paris. After the conversion of the former Alcatel industrial site in Marcoussis into a data centre campus, the takeover of the Nokia site in Nozay emphasises our commitment to the region and our will to work with our local ecosystem and make it flourish.”
Already present in Essonne since 2006 with the two Marcoussis campuses (PAR1 and PAR2), Data4 is reasserting its status as a key player in the region with the creation of a new site in Nozay (PAR3), which will raise its total available electrical power to 375 megawatts (MW) over the three sites. Moreover, Data4 said that it chose this site for the purpose of limiting land take – an important line of its sustainable development strategy – as well as the because of the potential to create synergies with its two other Île-de-France sites, particularly in the area of connectivity, due to their geographical proximity.
“Our three campuses will lie within a five kilometre radius, allowing our customers to extend their hosting capacity very easily, and improve their resilience thanks to the redundancy of their architectures and equipment. They will also benefit from extensive connectivity and low latency thanks to a great diversity of telecom operators. This strengthening of the region will also help boost the local economy by creating around 500 additional direct and indirect jobs”, explained Alexandre Delaval, Data4’s director for France.
The group said that it is also committed to supporting the development of an eco-district, via re-use of the unavoidable heat produced by its data centres, a project carried out in collaboration with the town hall of Nozay.
“This is a real opportunity for the community of Nozay and the Paris-Saclay urban area. This future campus of data centres and incubators will be one of the largest in Île-de-France. It will generate significant trade for our village’s businesses. It also enables the redevelopment of the Nokia site to develop a new business zone and therefore a future source of jobs which will benefit the town,” announced Didier Perrier, mayor of Nozay.
“This large-scale project has attracted our full attention since it will be virtuous in sustainable development terms. It will enable the re-use of the unavoidable heat produced by the data centres for our future orchard eco-district, our Villarceau sporting facilities, and our future buildings in the school district (Verts Prés and Clozeaux). Our village will become energy self-sufficient by drawing on these sites and reduce its carbon footprint related to dependency on fossil fuel energy. We are therefore participating with Data 4 in a great project of ecological, energy and economic transition for our village.”
All the standards and certifications of the Data4 group will be extended to this new Nozay site, such as the ISO 50001 standard relating to energy management, or the European Code of Conduct.
Besides the regeneration of this industrial site and the re-use of the unavoidable heat produced by the data centres, Data4 will also ensure the whole site is certified under BREEAM, an international benchmark certification awarded to the most environmentally-friendly architecture projects based on a large number of criteria (management of energy, water, waste, and access to sustainable transport, but also occupant health and wellbeing).
In addition to assessing the key environmental criteria of the site, the BREEAM label will also take into account the biodiversity of the site in its current state. This assessment will make it possible to identify issues such as veteran trees and protected species, to conserve them in the future landscape development project currently being defined. In addition, an ecological engineer will suggest lines of improvement to strengthen the preservation and development of the biodiversity on the site.
