Google — Saint-Ghislain, Belgium AI Data Center Campus

Google’s Saint-Ghislain campus in Wallonia, Belgium is one of the company’s largest and most innovative European data center facilities. Opened in 2010, it was built on the site of a former industrial facility and is notable for its pioneering use of a nearby canal — the Canal du Centre — for water-based cooling, dramatically reducing freshwater consumption compared to conventional evaporative cooling systems.

The campus supports Google Cloud’s europe-west1 region and hosts AI training and inference workloads for European users. Saint-Ghislain is powered by renewable energy through long-term wind and solar power purchase agreements in Belgium and the broader European Energy Certificate market. Google has repeatedly held it up as an example of sustainable data center design.

The facility has been expanded several times since opening, with multiple data center buildings now operational across the campus. Belgium’s position at the crossroads of European fiber networks (particularly the BNIX internet exchange in Brussels) makes it strategically important for low-latency connectivity across Europe. Google has also invested in workforce development programs in the Mons–Borinage region, which has a history of industrial transition.