ScoreMyDataCenter Independent observatory Independent, public observatory
Data centers are transforming our territories. Water, energy, land, local impact, transparency: ScoreMyDataCenter publicly assesses the acceptability risk of every project, with an open method and sourced facts.
We don't ask permission to publish our scores. We hold ourselves to the method.
A critic reviews a film without the studio's approval. A journalist publishes an investigation without the consent of those it disturbs. ScoreMyDataCenter belongs to that tradition: freedom of criticism and contribution to the public-interest debate.
Our contract in return: a public method, sourced facts, measured words, and a permanent right to correction and response. Read why →
The hottest issue in AI infrastructure has no independent referee. Now it does.
Our mission: measure, source and make public the acceptability of every data center project — grounding the debate in facts.
A 900 MW data center is announced near you. Where do you read, clearly, what it's worth? Its local impact?
Existing maps list technical specifications; conflict trackers count disputes. No one lays out, project by project, the reality of each case: a grade, sources, a method anyone can verify and recompute. That is the gap ScoreMyDataCenter fills: the first independent acceptability grade, public and contestable — factual, sourced and methodical ratings, published as a contribution to the public-interest debate. And a scale with teeth: an A is proven in operation, never promised — even excellent promises cap at B; only verified proof earns the A. Our mission: score every data center in Europe — methodically, publicly, one file at a time.
Animation: Campus IA Fouju's fiche gets graded — the five pillar sub-scores appear, the site score fills, then the letter stamps in.
Real case: Campus IA Fouju — five pillars, the site score, then the letter. Public method, sourced data.
Search. Compare. Understand.
Map of the projects
A data center is not just an IT building: it is a project that mobilises vital resources and commits a territory.
108 sites out of 444 sit in high water-stress areas. Water weighs heavily in the corpus grades.
See the map →Grid saturation slows connections and degrades scores. Siting choices with heavy consequences.
See the map →Artificialisation, soils, biodiversity: local impacts that matter as much as megawatts.
Understand the stakes →229 projects out of 444 do not disclose their power. We grade on public documents — opacity never pays.
Understand the method →24 indicators across 5 pillars, split between what a project endures and what its operator chooses. The grid, its weights and its thresholds are public and downloadable.
Pillar weight in the global grade
Public, versioned and dated methodology — verifiable anteriority.
The site says how much. Our analyses say where it's heading, and what it means.
The layer that produces the judgment is open: method, data and engine, verifiable by anyone.
AGPLThe engine code is free: anyone who improves it must share those improvements back. engine, ODbLOpen database: freely reusable, provided you credit the source and share alike. published data, CC BY-SAFree content: reusable if you credit the author and share under the same terms. methodology. The code is public on GitHub: anyone can recompute every grade, with full rigor.
Scored entities never pay for their public grade. An operator may have its project analysed; but the grade moves only when the real project changes — never because it paid. "Pay to raise the grade" is structurally impossible.
Every scoring, revision and correction is dated, versioned and justified. Grades cannot move silently.
Data corrections are free and reviewed. To stop anyone from gaming a grade, our detection rules are public in principle; their numeric thresholds stay confidential — publishing them would hand out the manual for slipping through.
Our commitment: a project's grade and its justification are public and free, forever.
One access, different uses — every profile has its entry point.
Who we are
ScoreMyDataCenter is the work of Franck Bardol. At the intersection of AI infrastructure, ethics and public decision-making.
Because grading every data center in Europe is not something you improvise. An architecture of specialised agents processes tens of thousands of sources to grade each data center rigorously — under human control.
The agents locate the useful public sources: regulatory files, institutional data, operator documents, maps, local decisions and press articles.
They turn these heterogeneous sources into comparable data: power, water, land, grid, consultation, transparency, project status.
They cross-check information, flag contradictions, identify missing data and keep the source of every fact.
They apply the same method to every project, recompute the grades and check that thresholds, rules and guardrails are respected.
They detect changes: a new authorisation, an appeal, a project modification, a published figure, an evolution of the grid or the local context.
They produce a first factual synthesis and flag fragile wording. Final validation, arbitration and publication remain my responsibility.
I define the strategy, the methods, the ESG weightings and the publication rules. I arbitrate complex cases, settle disagreements, orchestrate the specialised AI agents and stand behind every published grade. Agents propose, the human decides.
Expertise in service of the public debate
AI makes it possible to work at the scale of the corpus. The method, the arbitration and the responsibility remain human.
Each project receives two A–E grades — one for the site, one for the operator — from 24 indicators across 5 pillars (energy, water, land, local impact, transparency). A numeric score is computed, then translated into a letter; next to it, a confidence level says whether the grade rests on solid or fragile data.
The site grade assesses what the project endures — territory, water, grid, land — whoever carries it. The operator grade assesses what the operator chooses — efficiency, consultation, transparency, commitments. We separate the terrain from the decisions.
Yes. Suggest it through the Contact section: we prioritize the best-documented and most-debated cases. One independence note: we never grade on behalf of a party, for or against — the grade follows the method, not the requester.
Public sources: power grid, water, land registries, census data, official records, local press. Every displayed value links to its source, and the method is open: anyone can redo the computation.
Because depth follows the data. A grade requires thresholds calibrated country by country (grid, water, land, registries, procedures) and a working correction-and-response channel — which is the case in Europe today. In the United States we first publish the 'on watch' layer: citizen oppositions ✋🏼 and moratoria ⏸️ — sourced facts, never a grade. The first US grades will come when the data and the calibration are ready, not before: we do not grade the unknown.
No, never. Scored entities do not pay for their grade. A project's grade and its justification are public and free, forever.
Because an A is proven, never promised: it is reserved for values verified in operation. A fully declarative file, however excellent, caps at B — “announced ≠ measured”. An operator earns its A by bringing third-party proof (its EED filing to the regulator, an ISO/IEC 30134 audit by an accredited body — never a marketing page) through our public correction channel: the data flips from “announced” to “measured”, the cap lifts, and the re-score is traced in the public audit log. An A cannot be bought or declared: it is demonstrated. And proof lifts the project & process grade — never the site grade: the territory is endured, it cannot be proven away.
A critic reviews a film without the studio's approval. A journalist publishes an investigation without the consent of those it disturbs. ScoreMyDataCenter belongs to that tradition: freedom of criticism and contribution to the public-interest debate. The grade is an exercise of the freedom of criticism; its strength rests on the transparency of the method, the quality of the sources and the restraint of the words. We do not ask permission to publish an independent assessment. In return, we hold ourselves to a public method, sourced facts, measured words, and a permanent right to correction and response.
Two distinct tools: factual correction — any data point is corrected on evidence, the change is dated, and when the calculation is affected the grade is recomputed under the same method version — and the operator's response, published in a dedicated space, clearly attributed and dated. Publishing a response never changes the grade automatically: it only moves when new or corrected facts change the result produced by the method.
A wrong data point is corrected on evidence, and the operator can send a response published alongside the grade. But a sourced, methodical grade is not removed on request: pulling it because it displeases would be selling it in reverse. The grade stays; the counter-argument is added.
No: it is an acceptability-risk grade, coupled with a confidence level, and it can evolve with the project. The numeric score is published to make the computation transparent, but the A–E letter is what counts — the grade applies an expert, sourced, versioned grid; it does not claim the precision of an oracle.
Yes, by design. A grade changes for two reasons: the project evolves (new data), or the yardstick evolves with the state of the art. Our thresholds anchor on standards that tighten over time (ISO, European regulation): an A always means “the best achievable today”, not “the best of 2026”. Without that, everyone would end up A as technology progresses — which is exactly why the EU energy label was reset in 2021, when nearly every appliance had become A+++. Each grade is therefore dated and tied to a methodology version: a data center excellent in 2026 may be “average” by 2036 standards — and that is precisely the score's job: reward progress, and flag what ages.
An independent observatory founded by Franck Bardol. The method is open, scored entities do not pay, and how we operate is detailed in the Open model section.