August 26 – Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META.O) The company has signed a deal to purchase up to 150 MW of geothermal energy from Sage Geosystems to power its U.S. data centers, it said in a statement Monday, as it works hard to build out infrastructure to support its massive investments in energy-hungry artificial intelligence.
The first phase of the project is expected to be operational by 2027 and will “significantly” expand the use of geothermal energy in the United States, the social media company said.
Meta’s announcement came at a U.S. Department of Energy event on geothermal development, as President Joe Biden’s administration calls on major technology companies to invest in new climate-friendly power generation facilities to meet their growing electricity needs.
This surge is due to the adoption of technologies such as generative AI, which require power-hungry data centers, a development that could complicate Biden’s goal of decarbonizing the energy sector by 2035 to combat climate change.
A Meta spokesman told Reuters the company expects Sage Geosystems’ energy to be integrated into the grid rather than directly supplying a specific data center.
The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
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Reporting by Katie Paul in New York. Editing by Matthew Lewis
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