Google announces a $17bn Wyoming data centre
Google said it would pay for 100% of the power it uses, including a 702MW carbon-capture fuel-cell plant; TechCrunch reported the site was bought from Crusoe, whose own plan had been 10 gigawatts.
- Compute & infrastructure
- Minor
Google announced on 5 November a “long-term, $17 billion investment” in a data centre in Laramie County, Wyoming, near Cheyenne, which it called its first data centre in the state. In a post by Steve Walter, its vice-president for global infrastructure and energy, Google said: “We will pay for 100% of the power we use,” and that it would cover the infrastructure needs directly driven by its growth.
The power plan is the distinctive part. Google said it had contracted with American Electric Power (AEP) for a 702MW fuel-cell development, fuelled by natural gas and with carbon capture and storage, built by Bloom Energy. Google called it the largest planned development of its kind. Captured carbon would be stored at Tallgrass’s Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub, which Google said brought its total contracted carbon-capture capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt. It is also buying power from gas generators run by Tallgrass Energy and Black Hills Energy. Google said the facility would be air-cooled to limit strain on local water, expected hundreds of millions of dollars in local property taxes, and said it had met more than 200 residents. The post gave no job count.
The post does not mention Crusoe. TechCrunch reported on 6 November that Crusoe had confirmed selling an unfinished project at the site to Google. Crusoe announced the project in 2025 with Tallgrass, with plans to scale it to 10 gigawatts. According to TechCrunch, Google did not disclose the price, Google had reportedly raised concerns about the project’s cost and construction timeline, and Bloomberg had first reported the sale in June. TechCrunch added that Crusoe is still building a separate data centre for Google near Amarillo, Texas. Neither company’s own statement on the sale was in the sources reviewed, so that account rests on the one outlet.
Google’s power-cost pledge follows President Trump’s post of 21 October saying new large data centres should generate their own electricity, and comes amid falling public support for local data-centre projects. The post does not link the pledge to either.