DATA CENTRES
HEATWAVE
RESILIENCE
June 2026 heatwave: data centres lost their air conditioning, and the outside temperature alone was enough to take them offline
During the June heatwave, some data centres lost their air conditioning. The outside temperature alone was enough to take them offline.
That is what happened in France in June 2026.
Air conditioning equipment, recent equipment at that, reached its operational limits during the heatwave.
As a result, services were disrupted and customers affected.
At France-IX, we were not affected. But the episode raises questions that concern us all.
The air conditioning systems in service today are designed for maximum temperatures that were reasonable for the weather of ten years ago. How many projects still work with “2003-type” or “2015-type” climate scenarios?
Today, those weather scenarios are no longer reasonable.
And we cannot ignore the question or be reluctant to anticipate. The risk is far too great.
Especially since air conditioning is far from the only issue: there is also the question of cooling data centres with water.
In times of drought, data centres’ water use can compete directly with domestic and agricultural uses.
Land-use planning must therefore be carefully thought through and coordinated.
In France, this dimension is still little addressed. The French Water Partnership (Partenariat Français pour l’Eau, Marie-Laure Vercambre) is working on this question in particular.
Preparing for crises with a real heatwave plan is an urgent matter. Resilience is not built in an emergency.
As I explain to my 4-year-old: “you have to think a lot before, and a little bit during”. Thinking is rarely what slows down the delivery of a project; quite the opposite. Let’s think about it.
Illustration: map of forecast maximum temperatures for Wednesday 8 July 2026, Meteociel.fr (source: DWD).
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