Data center energy demand is skyrocketing, and Google believes geothermal energy is the key to 24/7 clean electricity production

Google has announced an ambitious new partnership with Berkshire Hathaway-backed energy company NV Energy to power its Nevada data centers with geothermal energy.

NV Energy has worked with geothermal specialists Fervo Energy to include 115 MW of increased geothermal energy in the new Clean Transition Tariff (CTT), all of which will be delivered to Google.

In a blog post announcing the deal, Google said it would build on a recent commercial pilot with Fervo Energy in Nevada.

Last November, the tech giant revealed that it had launched a “first-of-its-kind” project with Fervo to generate geothermal energy to provide emission-free electricity for data centers. According to Google, the project has already brought promising results.

“Since then, Fervo has achieved significant reductions in drilling process time and costs, demonstrating the strength of early-stage customer demand to help rapidly drive early-stage technology improvements.”

Under the new agreement with NV Energy, Google is increasing the amount of “geothermal enhanced capacity” 25 times, a promise to provide 24/7 clean energy to the local grid serving the state’s hyperscaler data center.

Blog co-authors Amanda Peterson Corio, global director of data center energy, and Briana Kobo, head of energy innovation at Google, said there are limits to power purchase agreements (PPAs) under which companies purchase clean energy generated mainly from wind or solar facilities – reflect the need for new public procurement models to accelerate the energy transition.

These limitations include the fact that these PPAs are often isolated from broader network planning and utility investment cycles, as well as the unpredictability of weather, which makes solar and wind power often unreliable.

As such, Peterson Corio and Kobo argued that hyperscalers must adopt alternative technologies to deliver clean energy whenever needed.

“These technologies, such as enhanced geothermal energy, long-term energy storage and advanced nuclear energy, are in their early stages, are relatively expensive and are not incentivized by current regulatory structures. As a result, customers often continue to rely on fossil fuels for reliable energy when solar and wind energy are not available.”

Google is not alone in its pursuit of data center sustainability

The proposed agreement is currently awaiting review and approval by the Nevada Public Utilities Commission, and Google says it will help the company move closer to its goal of operating all of its data centers and office campuses by 2030 on carbon-free energy by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. .

The rush to sign renewable energy purchase agreements amid the ongoing explosion in demand for data center capacity has resulted in all three hyperscalers making major commitments to energy suppliers around the world.

In May, Microsoft signed the largest-ever corporate renewable energy deal with investment firm Brookfield, a $10 billion deal to advance renewable energy projects and unlock 10.5 gigawatts of generating capacity between 2026 and 2030 in the U.S. and Europe.

The tech giant also signed its first PPA with Shizen Energy to provide renewable energy for its data centers in October 2023.

Meanwhile, AWS is also exploring alternative power sources to meet the data center’s energy demands. In March, the hyperscaler announced plans to acquire a nuclear-powered data center campus in a $650 million deal with Talen Energy.

As part of the deal, the cloud giant will acquire the Cumulus data center complex, located next to the 2.5-gigawatt Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Talen said that as a result of the transaction, AWS will gain access to both the data center and the energy infrastructure of the neighboring nuclear power plant.

Despite frantic efforts to secure clean energy to power their data centers, the data center boom fueled by the explosion of generative AI appears to have put new pressures on energy infrastructure and threatens their sustainability goals.

For example, Microsoft 2024 Sustainability report found that its carbon emissions had actually increased significantly, largely due to the expansion of its data centers.

The report found that the company’s carbon emissions increased by 29% as a result of its push to build data centers to support its cloud and generative artificial intelligence businesses.

He noted that in 2023, the company’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions, arising as a direct result of the company’s operations and from electricity and heat consumption, decreased by 6.3% compared to the 2020 baseline.

However, this was largely offset by a 30.9% increase in Scope 3 emissions, emissions that arise indirectly from assets not owned or controlled by Microsoft but that impact the organization’s value chain, such as embodied carbon in building materials used to build new amenities.