Evaporative cooling towers are not widely used in France, largely due to regulations: air-cooled cooling towers are classified as Installations Classified for Environmental Protection (ICPE), under section 2921 of the Environmental Code. Depending on the thermal capacity of the facility to be equipped with TARs, the requirements range from simply filing a declaration to obtaining explicit authorization for facilities exceeding 20 MW. This added complexity has contributed to steering the French data center fleet toward solutions not subject to this regulatory requirement
Ah... so this might be why Scaleway made such a big thing about adiabatic cooling. It's more efficient, but the default in other parts of the world is much harder to permit