A New Google-Funded Data Center Will Be Powered by a Massive Gas Plant | WIRED

Overview

A New Google-Funded Data Center Will Be Powered by a Massive Gas Plant

A new data center being built with investments from Google will be partly powered by a natural gas project that emits the yearly emissions equivalent of putting more than 970,000 additional gas-powered cars on the road.

Details

According to a Texas state air permit application, the Goodnight data center campus in Armstrong County, Texas will be partly powered by private natural gas turbines that will emit more than 4.5 million tons of greenhouse gases each year. This is more than ten times higher the yearly emissions of an average natural gas plant, and more emissions per year than an average coal plant.

Michael Thomas, the founder of Cleanview and author of a new report on Google’s power strategy for its data centers, says that Google’s focus on and continued commitment to renewables is often held up by environmental groups as an example of Big Tech doing things right. But the plans for this campus, he alleges, illustrate how even big tech companies with stated climate goals and a public commitment to renewable energy are exploring fossil fuel investments as the AI race heats up.

While the Goodnight campus is not the biggest fossil fuel project planned in the US to power data centers, nor one that will create the most emissions, the fact that the company is seemingly now exploring private, off-the-grid gas power for their data centers “suggests that something is changing,” he says.

AI infrastructure company Crusoe began constructing the data center in May, according to local media reports. In November, Google announced that it would be making a $40 billion AI investment in Texas. As part of that investment, the company joined Crusoe to help build the data center already under construction in Armstrong County.

The air permit application, filed in January, specifies that of the six buildings at the campus, the first four will be connected to the electric grid, while the fifth and sixth buildings will be powered by the on-site gas plant. In response to questions from WIRED for this story, Google spokesperson Chrissy Moy said the company does not have a “contract in place” for gas power at this facility.

In addition to more than 900 megawatts of natural gas, the Goodnight campus would include 265 megawatts of wind power, according to a separate interconnection request made with Texas’s Public Utility Commission. Google says it does have an “agreement” for this wind energy.

Moy added that the company is “signed on to the data center campus,” but noted that “a permit for an energy project doesn't necessarily confirm contracted energy plans for the data center, and isn't mutually exclusive to other energy sources.”

As data center developers face lengthy wait times to connect to electricity grids and rising concerns over consumer electric bills, they’re increasingly turning to building their own energy, or what’s known as behind-the-meter power. For these projects, gas is king; data centers are now driving a US boom in natural gas. Nearly 100 gigawatts of natural-gas fired power are currently in development throughout the US solely to power data centers, according to research published by the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor in January.

Per the Global Energy Monitor research, there are at least 15 projects in development across the US that are larger than the Goodnight campus. Several of these projects have only just been announced or are still in the development phase, and have not yet filed air permits detailing just how much greenhouse gases they will emit. But the numbers that have been made public are jaw-dropping: Open AI and Oracle’s Project Jupiter in New Mexico’s air permit application declares that it could emit 14 million tons of greenhouse gases each year, more than three times as much as emissions from the Goodnight campus. Meanwhile, Crusoe is developing several other projects in Texas as part of the massive Stargate campus; one of the gas projects involved would emit almost 8 million tons of greenhouse gases, according to the state permit application.

“Grid growth can't match AI demand, so a pragmatic 'all-of-the-above' strategy is essential—with gas as a critical bridge,” Cully Cavness, the cofounder and president of Crusoe, told WIRED in a statement. “This isn't the destination; it's the foundation we build on while investing in batteries, solar, wind, and small modular nuclear reactors. We're not waiting for a carbon-free grid—we're building the path to one."

Other tech companies are publicly embracing new gas build-outs. This week, Microsoft signed a deal with oil giant Chevron to supply up to 2.5 gigawatts of gas power for a data center in West Texas.

For his part, Thomas sees behind-the-meter power potentially becoming the main power strategy for data center developers.

“It’s important to note how novel this is,” he says. “This is not something that any business was doing up until a year ago or so, and now it is so popular. The speed is so much better than waiting for the grid.”

Since the start of the AI arms race, Big Tech companies that previously shared aggressive climate goals have admitted to backtracking, as they increasingly build out power-hungry data centers. Despite a nearly 50 percent increase in overall emissions over the past five years Google claimed in its sustainability report last year that it had reduced its data center emissions by 12 percent. And the company has publicly touted its commitment to renewable power. In addition to the Armstrong campus, Google’s Texas investment includes a data center in Haskell county that will, per a company press release, “be built alongside a new solar and battery storage plant.” Google is also building out a number of large behind-the-meter renewable energy projects, as Thomas explored in a recent report.

With an administration in charge that both champions data center buildouts, scorns greenhouse gas reporting policies, and pushes American natural gas, it seems likely that behind-the-meter gas power will develop in spite of the big emissions cost. In March, the White House convened executives from seven big tech companies, including Google, to sign a nonbinding agreement to protect ratepayers, including a pledge to “build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their new energy demands.” Experts told WIRED that this agreement was mostly symbolic, as neither data center developers nor the White House have much control over policies that would lower electric bills.

Some lawmakers, however, are questioning Big Tech about the climate impacts of their data center projects. Just a few days after the White House event, three Democratic senators sent letters to a number of AI companies and data center developers, including x AI, Open AI, and Meta, expressing concern about specific large-scale data center projects and their potential impact on the environment and the climate. (The lawmakers did not send a letter to Google, but did send a letter to Crusoe asking about an unrelated project.) The senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, asked that executives from these companies answer several questions about their planned data centers, including why they decided to power the data centers with natural gas as opposed to renewables.

“It’s well established that climate upheaval and huge economic impacts will result if we fail to

limit global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels,” the senators wrote in their letter to tech executives, laying out the need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet this goal. “I would ask that you explain how your actions are consistent with this goal, and if they are not, why you don’t think that matters.”

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Key Takeaways

A New Google-Funded Data Center Will Be Powered by a Massive Gas Plant
A new data center being built with investments from Google will be partly powered by a natural gas project that emits the yearly emissions equivalent of putting more than 970,000 additional gas-powered cars on the road
According to a Texas state air permit application, the Goodnight data center campus in Armstrong County, Texas will be partly powered by private natural gas turbines that will emit more than 4
Michael Thomas, the founder of Cleanview and author of a new report on Google’s power strategy for its data centers, says that Google’s focus on and continued commitment to renewables is often held up by environmental groups as an example of Big Tech doing things right
While the Goodnight campus is not the biggest fossil fuel project planned in the US to power data centers, nor one that will create the most emissions, the fact that the company is seemingly now exploring private, off-the-grid gas power for their data centers “suggests that something is changing,” he says