Texas power plant would emit 4.5m tons of carbon dioxide per year, more than that of the entire city of San Francisco
Google has struck a partnership for a natural gas power plant that could provide energy for one of its datacenters in Texas, unearthed by new research and confirmed by the company. The move is part of an ongoing about-face for the tech giant, which once pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030 and has long been seen as a pioneer in clean energy.
The gas power plant is slated to be built in Armstrong county, a sparsely populated area in the Texas panhandle. According to a report by the research organization Cleanview, the project is being led by Crusoe Energy, which partnered with Google to develop the datacenter campus known as “Goodnight”, named after a nearby town.
Crusoe filed for a permit in January to build the 933-megawatt power plant onsite at the Goodnight campus, which showed the facility would operate off the grid and provide energy to at least two buildings on the campus, according to Cleanview. Satellite images commissioned by Cleanview confirm construction is well under way.
According to Crusoe’s 465-page permit application, the power plant would emit as much as 4.5m tons of carbon dioxide, a primary driver of climate change, per year. For comparison, the entire city of San Francisco emits about 4m tons of carbon dioxide annually.
