A $900M Texas photo voltaic mega-farm will energy Meta’s information facilities

Meta simply signed extra energy buy agreements (PPAs) with ENGIE North America, increasing their partnership to greater than 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of photo voltaic throughout 4 initiatives in Texas. It’s only a disgrace the social media big can also be going huge on gasoline vegetation in Louisiana to energy its information facilities on the similar time.

The newest PPAs embrace ENGIE’s new 600-megawatt (MW) Swenson Ranch Photo voltaic undertaking in Stonewall County, southeast of Lubbock. When it comes on-line in 2027, Swenson will change into ENGIE’s largest photo voltaic farm inside its 11 GW North American portfolio of photo voltaic, wind, and battery storage initiatives. Meta will purchase 100% of Swenson’s energy to run its US information facilities.

ENGIE says the $900 million undertaking will create over 350 development jobs and generate over $158 million in tax income for Stonewall County and the native hospital district over its lifetime.

“Our goal is to deliver dependable, cost-competitive energy to the grid as quickly as doable, and initiatives like Swenson display the significance of photo voltaic to satisfy the well timed wants of our prospects,” mentioned Dave Carroll, ENGIE North America’s CEO and chief renewables officer.

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Meta’s head of world vitality, Urvi Parekh, mentioned the expanded take care of ENGIE “allows us to proceed matching 100% of our electrical energy use with clear and renewable vitality to assist our information middle operations,” Parekh mentioned.

Electrek’s Take

Meta isn’t precisely placing its cash the place its mouth is relating to matching 100% of its electrical energy use with clear vitality. The social media big can also be constructing a $10 billion information middle – one of many world’s largest – in Richland Parish, Louisiana, that’s going to be powered by three gas-powered vegetation, which utility Entergy will construct particularly for Meta, which is paying 50% of the prices. These three vegetation will produce 2,262 MW of soiled fossil gas energy. For perspective, that’s almost 10% of Entergy’s present vitality capability throughout 4 states.

So whereas the 1.3 GW of fresh vitality that ENGIE will produce in Texas for Meta is nice, it doesn’t make up for the CO2 emissions it’s about to create with this soiled undertaking it’s constructing in a lower-income farming group in Louisiana. It definitely isn’t for pace, as a result of photo voltaic is the quickest to place up. Restricted state oversight – and a 2024 state regulation that lets the corporate skip paying gross sales tax – probably helped Meta make that damaging choice.

Learn extra: Texas simply turned No 1 within the US for many utility-scale photo voltaic

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