Google Powers Up Geothermal Ambitions with Record-Breaking Deal

Google has made a bold move in its quest for renewable energy by partnering with Fervo Energy to power a potential data center in southwest Utah. The tech giant has agreed to buy 396 megawatts (MWs) of power from Fervo, with an option for an additional 600 MWs, which would total nearly 1 gigawatt.

This deal marks the world's largest enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) contract to date and represents a significant step up in scale for Google's geothermal program. Unlike solar and wind power, which are intermittent, geothermal energy taps into the Earth's subsurface heat to generate electricity around the clock.

Fervo's EGS technology uses techniques borrowed from the oil and gas industry to drill deep horizontal wells, create fractures in hot rock formations, and circulate water through those fractures to capture heat and generate steam-driven electricity. The company plans to bring its Cape Station GeoCluster online in 2028 and has the potential to expand its capacity up to 2 gigawatts.

This partnership is part of Google's broader effort to prioritize renewable energy and advance promising technologies that can offer more options for powering future data centers. As AI demand boosts data center capacity, power grids are becoming increasingly constrained, leading to a boom in on-site power generation, with many projects turning to natural gas, which raises emissions concerns.