In what is now the world's largest corporate clean power pact for hydroelectricity, Google has gained control of up to three gigawatts of U.S. hydropower, gained in a recent deal with the investment firm Brookfield Asset Management.
As part of this agreement, the tech megacorporation has acquired the rights to electricity generated from two hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania in a 20-year purchase agreement, with plans to invest $25 billion in data centers across Pennsylvania and surrounding states in the coming years as well, per Reuters (h/t Semafor).
"This collaboration with Brookfield is a significant step forward, ensuring clean energy supply in the PJM region where we operate," Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's head of data center energy, said in a statement.
What is Google after here, you might ask? Like many technology companies at the moment, Google is now deeply invested in artificial intelligence, and with AI's environmental impact coming under serious criticism of late, the company is likely trying to react by investing in cleaner energy sources to power its AI farms, its cloud computing, and the rest of its massive worldwide technological operation.
After all, this is not the first agreement of this kind Google has struck, even this year. It has invested in carbon-free geothermal and advanced nuclear energy technology as well.
Is making artificial intelligence environmentally friendly a good idea? Is it even possible? These are questions that have yet to be answered, even by Google. But a corporation of its scale making a decades-long commitment to investments in clean energy has massive upside, both for its standing in the court of public opinion and also the environment writ large.
Even if these are decisions made with financial priorities in mind, they are worth celebrating, and it's worth trying to hold Google accountable if its financial priorities change for the worse in the future.
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