Google is buying another 600 megawatts of solar power to supply electricity to its data centers.
The new deal covers solar and storage projects being developed in South Carolina by EnergyRe. The company says it has 16 gigawatts under development; most projects listed on its site have deployed around 60 MW to 75 MW of solar, though some are larger.
Google has recently invested heavily in renewables. Last year, it pledged to invest $20 billion with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate to build enough zero-carbon power plants to provide electricity for several gigawatts’ worth of data centers. And in January, the company signed a contract to buy over 700 megawatts of solar projects in Oklahoma from Leeward Renewable Energy.
Like many tech companies, Google has said it will eliminate its carbon footprint from energy by 2030. After years of steady investment in renewables, Google and its peers had been marching steadily toward that goal.
But the growth of AI and the compute needed to run it has complicated that math, forcing Google and others to step up their purchases. The company contracted 4 gigawatts of clean power in 2023, the last year for which Google has made data available.
Google isn’t alone: Microsoft has added hundreds of megawatts of solar this year alone, including a 475 megawatt purchase in March. Meta signed deals for 595 megawatts and 505 megawatts of solar in January and February, respectively.
Tim De Chant is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was founding editor. De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, and he was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA degree in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.
