Google is turning on the gas for its data centers

Google’s latest pledge to support a new clean energy technology is… a gas project? To be precise, it’s a gas-fired power plant outfitted with filtering devices to capture its planet-heating carbon emissions. Is this just a polluting fossil fuel project in sheep’s clothing?

Google just inked an agreement to support the development of a new gas-fired power plant in Illinois called the Broadwing Energy Center. It’ll be paired with carbon capture and storage (CCS), technology meant to filter carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and then store it underground so that the greenhouse gas doesn’t build up in the atmosphere.

In theory, that’s supposed to help the planet from heating beyond the point at which rising sea levels render entire coastal communities unlivable and ocean warming kills off the world’s coral reefs, among other disasters brought on by climate change. In reality, CCS is mired in doubts about its technical and financial feasibility. There’s also a healthy amount of skepticism over whether CCS will only prolong dependence on fossil fuels rather than encouraging a transition to more sustainable sources of energy, like solar and wind power.

Google says it has agreed to purchase “most” of the power that the new 400MW-capacity power plant at Broadwing produces once it starts operating in 2030. “Our goal is to help bring promising new CCS solutions to the market while learning and innovating quickly,” Google says in its announcement today.

So far, CCS has a pretty checkered track record in the US. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars on failed CCS projects, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office. Of nearly $684 million spent on CCS projects at six coal plants, only one of them ever came online. The other projects suffered from “factors affecting their economic viability,” the GAO report says.

The cost of electricity from power plants combined with carbon capture is at least 1.5 to 2 times more expensive than that from solar, wind, or traditional coal and gas power plants without CCS, according to a 2023 report based on facilities in Australia. Already, rising electricity demand from data centers have contributed to climbing utility bills in the US.

The single CCS project that moved forward in the US with DOE support came online in 2017 before shuttering for a few years starting in 2020, when the covid-19 pandemic sent oil prices crashing. Why was it so sensitive to oil prices when the plant burned coal? The project supplied captured CO2 to an “enhanced oil recovery” project, a process involving shooting the CO2 deep into the ground to force out hard-to-reach reserves, as a means of staying financially viable.

The project that Google is backing differs in a couple key ways. The plant burns gas, which has become a cheaper way to generate power than than burning coal in the US. And the CO2 will be sequestered a mile underground in a well near the power plant, rather than sold as a product for enhanced oil recovery. Google claims Broadwing will be able to permanently store about 90 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions the plant generates, a figure higher than many other CCS projects have been able to achieve to date.

That doesn’t account for other problems associated with gas-fired power plants. Even though the industry prefers the term “natural gas,” they primarily burn methane, which is a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane routinely leaks from oil and gas wells and pipelines, a problem that merely capturing CO2 at a power plant fails to solve. Gas plants also produce other air pollutants that pose health risks to nearby communities.

Solar and onshore wind energy farms don’t come with the same climate pollution problems and are typically cheaper to deploy than fossil fuel-fired power plants these days. Google has been one of the biggest corporate purchasers of renewable energy for years now, helping wind and solar become the fastest-growing sources of new electricity generation.

Google doesn’t mention that in its announcement today, however, perhaps reflecting the political tide turning against renewables in the US under the Trump administration. Donald Trump has installed fossil fuel executives to lead the Department of Energy and other key posts in his administration while clawing back previously allocated federal funds for renewable energy projects and issuing stop work orders to offshore wind farms under construction.

Republicans are sunsetting tax incentives for solar and wind projects, but not for CCS, incidentally. CCS has needed the financial support to help it get off the ground, and now it has another backer in Google. Google is trying to satiate energy-hungry data centers as it scales up its AI ambitions, and its carbon footprint has grown in the process.