Tech giant Google has announced a $17 billion long-term commitment to construct its first data center campus in Laramie County, Wyoming.
To meet the compute demands of the new facility while upholding its corporate carbon targets, Google entered into a commercial-scale energy agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) to contract power from a 702 MW fuel-cell deployment, marking the largest planned fuel-cell power development for a data center to date.
Under the structure, AEP will operate the generation facility using solid-oxide fuel cells manufactured in the US by Bloom Energy. The electrochemical system converts natural gas into electricity without conventional combustion, yielding a concentrated CO2 stream that improves post-combustion separation efficiency.
The captured emissions will be piped and permanently sequestered underground at Tallgrass Energy’s Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub, located in the Denver-Julesburg Basin.
The Wyoming deal expands Google’s power purchase strategy for carbon-captured natural gas generation. Building on its October 2025 agreement for the 400 MW Broadwing Energy gas-fired CCS project in Decatur, Illinois, the Wyoming fuel-cell agreement brings Google’s total contracted CCUS capacity to nearly 1 GW.
Additionally, Google, Black Hills Energy, and Tallgrass Energy are conducting front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies to evaluate retrofitting carbon capture equipment onto nearby combined-cycle gas turbines.
To manage regional resource constraints, and consistent with Google’s corporate water stewardship policy for water-stressed regions, the Wyoming campus will feature an air-cooled architecture. While air cooling consumes roughly 10% more power than wet cooling systems, the choice eliminates operational strain on local municipal and groundwater supplies.
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