Google buys nearly 400 MW of geothermal power from Fervo

Google has agreed to buy 396 megawatts of electricity from Fervo’s Cape Station geothermal power plant in Utah to help power a planned new data center, under a power purchase agreement announced Tuesday. The plant is expected to come online in 2028, and Google has the option through June 2030 to buy an additional 600 megawatts.

The deal arrives as Google and other hyperscalers scour the country for new sources of electricity. Google has long been one of the larger corporate purchasers of clean energy in the U.S., buying power from wind, solar, and batteries as part of its pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 — a goal that became harder to hit in April, when the company struck a deal with data center developer Crusoe for 933 megawatts of natural gas power in Texas. The Fervo agreement could help Google fuel its AI ambitions without further imperiling that net-zero target.

Fervo is permitted to develop up to 2 gigawatts of geothermal energy at Cape Station, but Fervo senior vice president of strategy Sarah Jewett told TechCrunch in May that a third-party engineer found the site holds enough heat to generate twice as much electricity. If fully developed, those 4 gigawatts would about double the entire geothermal generating capacity currently installed in the U.S., according to a recent Department of Energy report. Enhanced geothermal technologies like Fervo’s, which tap deeper sources of heat, could let the U.S. generate up to 57 terawatts of electricity, the report found.

Google and Fervo have worked together for more than five years, with Google buying some of Fervo’s first electrons and later investing in Fervo’s last funding round before the company went public. Fervo’s stock popped on its first day of trading but has since shed those gains and more; news of the Google deal drove the stock up about 30% the day it was announced, before traders took some profits the following day.

Why it matters

The agreement highlights how much new power hyperscalers are locking up for AI data centers — and the tension in Google’s own strategy, chasing clean geothermal capacity even as a separate natural-gas deal complicates its 2030 net-zero target.