Michael Thomas@curious_founder
Over the last 3 months, I've reviewed 100+ documents to understand how Google is powering its data centers for Cleanview's latest report.
One of the many takeaways: Google is considering using on-site natural gas power.
Few companies in the world are hungrier for electricity than Google. In the AI era, the company's appetite for energy is only growing.
This year Google will invest $180B—most of it in data centers. Each new data center requires as much electricity as a small city. Permit documents and site plans we obtained show campus designs that use 800–1,000 MW.
And Google is building dozens of these data centers. Cleanview now tracks 63 Google data center projects across 20 U.S. states.
Finding enough electricity to power all of this development has become arguably the company's most important operational challenge.
Until recently, Google's power strategy was straightforward. The company connected its data centers to the grid and bought clean energy PPAs. Google has spent more than a decade building a reputation as a climate leader on the strength of that model.
But our latest report—and the documents we obtained to produce it—reveal a more complicated story and an evolving power strategy.
Google recently partnered with Crusoe to develop the Goodnight Campus in Texas. In January 2026, Crusoe filed a permit to build a 933 MW natural gas power plant on-site at the Goodnight campus.
Documents obtained by Cleanview show that the gas plant would power two buildings on the campus and would not connect to the power grid. The gas turbines could emit as much as 4.5 million tons of CO2 per year.
We commissioned high-resolution satellite images and confirmed the two buildings that would receive power from the gas plant are under construction.
A Google spokesperson said the company hasn't signed an offtake agreement with Crusoe for the natural gas plant. Someone familiar with the partnership between the two companies described the negotiations as ongoing and said the amount of power Google would use from the gas plant is still TBD.
The Goodnight campus is just one of more than 60 data center projects we reviewed for our report. It's important to stress that Google is also investing more in clean energy technology than almost any other entity—public or private—in the world. And it's doing so in innovative ways, as I wrote about recently.
The full report on Google's power strategy includes all of this and much more. We reviewed and wrote up case studies on 25 power deals signed over the last year. We're also releasing two datasets along with it.
You can get the full report and datasets on our website. We've also released a free excerpt with more details on the Goodnight project.
