Google is purchasing an additional 600 megawatts of solar power to power the data center.
The New Deal covers solar and storage projects being developed by Energy in South Carolina. The company says it has 16 gigawatts in development. Most projects listed on the site have solar powered around 60 to 75 MW, some of which are larger.
Google has recently invested heavily in renewable energy. Last year, they committed to investing cross-power and TPG Rise Climate and $20 billion to build a zero-carbon power plant that is sufficient to power a multi-gigawatt data center. And in January, the company signed an agreement to purchase more than 700 megawatts of solar projects in Oklahoma from Leeward Renewable Energy.
Like many tech companies, Google says it will remove carbon dioxide emissions from its energy by 2030. After years of stable investment in renewable energy, Google and its colleagues were steadily marching towards that goal.
However, the growth of AI and the calculations required to do so are mathematics complicated and forced to force Google and others to buy. The company signed a 4 Gigawatt clean power contract in 2023. This was last year when Google made its data available.
Google is not alone. Microsoft has added hundreds of megawatts of solar this year, including a 475 megawatt purchase in March. Meta signed deals for 595 megawatts and 505 megawatts of solar in January and February, respectively.