Google Supports Clean Energy: Geothermal Energy to Power Data Centers

By Shubhendra Anand , 26 November, 2024

Electricity is the primary sector in the energy market. It helps in the growth of overall sections of the economy, such as transportation, data centers, and households, among others. The clean energy transition plays a different role in the energy market. The transformation brought several changes to the energy market in 2024. Electrification in various sectors of the energy market hopes for a faster transformation. Electricity generation from renewables is a big task for the clean energy sector. It is difficult to get a constant flow of electricity from renewables without any hindrance. Electricity from wind and solar energy depends on the region's climatic conditions.

In collaboration with NV Energy, Google announces the partnership between the two companies in 2024. NV Energy will power Google using geothermal energy generated by Fervo Geothermal Energy. Google plans to power its two data centers with geothermal energy by joining hands with external sources in 2024.

Artificial intelligence boosts electricity usage in data centers. This is due to the high amount of electricity needed to work out the AI-based computations. Therefore, data centers need a constant flow of electricity to power their devices for faster functioning and computational abilities. Renewables providing electricity through wind and solar energy may fail to power data centers as they need large amounts of electricity. Hence, nuclear and geothermal energy are the best options for supplying constant electricity in data centers. 

According to data from Google's recent announcement, NV Energy is preparing to provide 115 megawatts of geothermal power to two Google data centers. This geothermal energy is produced by the Fervo company in 2024. The collaboration with NV Energy claims to provide the data centers with 25 times more geothermal energy capacity. Hence, it will boost Google's work increasingly in 2024. Experts support Google's remarkable step towards clean energy transition by enabling geothermal energy to power its data centers in 2024.

                              Growth of geothermal energy capacity till 2023