Google to Power New Data Center with Carbon-Capturing Natural Gas Plant

Google to Power New Data Center with Carbon-Capturing Natural Gas Plant December 14, 2025 As the explosive growth of artificial intelligence drives unprecedented demand for data center capacity, the industry faces mounting pressure over its soaring energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. In a significant move to address this challenge, Google has announced a pioneering corporate power purchase agreement to support a new natural gas power plant in Illinois, uniquely designed to capture the vast majority of its carbon emissions at the source. The tech giant has partnered with Broadwing Energy to develop a 400-megawatt natural gas facility. Crucially, the plant is engineered to capture approximately 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions. The captured CO2 will then be transported via pipeline for permanent geological storage in the nearby Mount Simon sandstone formation, a deep saline aquifer. This formation, lying beneath much of Illinois and parts of neighboring states, is estimated to have a storage capacity ranging from 27 to 109 gigatons of carbon dioxide. For context, total U.S. carbon emissions from fossil fuels in 2024 were about 4.9 gigatons. The project will utilize an existing injection well site that was part of an earlier large-scale carbon storage demonstration. To ensure secure containment, the CO2 will be injected over half a mile deep into a porous sandstone layer, capped by a thick, impermeable seal of Eau Claire shale exceeding 300 feet in thickness throughout most of the region. While carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has faced challenges, including a notable pipeline incident in Mississippi in 2020 and a subsurface migration event at a related Illinois site, proponents argue it is a critical tool for decarbonizing essential industries. This initiative represents a novel application of CCS within the tech sector's energy procurement strategy. According to the Global CCS Institute's 2025 report, 21 industrial facilities in the U.S. currently employ CCS, with only five utilizing deep saline aquifers for storage; the majority use the captured gas for enhanced oil recovery. Google's plan is distinct for its direct linkage of a data center's power supply to a dedicated, capture-ready fossil fuel plant. Many energy experts, including the International Energy Agency, contend that CCS will be necessary to mitigate climate change as global energy demand rises, particularly with AI companies like OpenAI calling for a massive expansion of power generation capacity. Source: theinvadingsea