On November 5, 2026, Google announced a long-term, $17 billion investment to build its first data center in Wyoming. The project will be carried out jointly with partners including Related Digital. Power will come from 702 MW of natural gas-fueled fuel cells, and the plan is to capture most of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) generated by that power production and store it underground. However, generating electricity with fuel cells and capturing and storing CO₂ are separate processes, and the facilities involved will not necessarily come online at the same time.
The contract with the utility was itself made public in October 2026, so this announcement is not the first time every part of the plan has come to light. In addition, power delivery and full fuel cell operation have been given different timelines. To judge when the investment will translate into actual power supply capacity, it is necessary to check the operating schedule for each facility separately from the status of CO₂ capture technology deployment.
Natural gas fuel cells paired with CO₂ capture and storage
Google's agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) covers 702 MW (702,000 kW) of fuel cells made by Bloom Energy. These fuel cells generate electricity through an electrochemical reaction using natural gas. Google says it plans to capture most of the CO₂ produced and store it permanently underground at Tallgrass Energy's Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub. Combining carbon capture and storage (CCS) is intended to reduce the emissions associated with generating power from natural gas. The fuel cells themselves do not capture CO₂, however, and separate equipment is required for power generation and for capture and storage.
In addition to the fuel cells, Google will procure natural gas-fired power from Tallgrass Energy and Black Hills Energy. For Tallgrass Energy's combined-cycle gas turbine, the company is at the stage of examining through a front-end engineering study whether CCS can be added. In other words, the CO₂ capture plan tied to the fuel cells and the study on adding CCS to the gas turbine are at different levels of concreteness. The announcement does not mean CCS has already been installed on every power source.
The actual effect of the CO₂ capture also remains unclear. The Next Web's November 5 article notes that Google says it will capture most of the CO₂ but does not give a specific capture rate. Google's official announcement likewise contains no capture rate figure, and the full life-cycle emissions, from natural gas procurement through power generation and CO₂ capture and storage, have not been disclosed. Quantitatively evaluating how much the plan can reduce greenhouse gas emissions will therefore require additional data.
Google also says that, with this contract, its total contracted generating capacity linked to CCS has reached about 1 GW. This figure, however, represents the capacity of power facilities that are planned to be paired with CCS, not the amount of CO₂ that can actually be captured. Generating capacity and CO₂ capture performance need to be assessed as separate metrics.
Power delivery in late 2027, full fuel cell operation by end of 2028
The project sets several stages between the start of power delivery, full fuel cell operation, and the point at which the data center's power demand peaks. According to the contract details Black Hills released on October 6, 2026, power service is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027, and the project is expected to reach peak load in 2030. Meanwhile, under the plan AEP announced on October 14, the 702 MW fuel cell facility is to be fully operational by the end of 2028. Even for the same Google project in Cheyenne, Wyoming, each date refers to a different step.
| Scheduled timing | Main milestone | Announced by / date |
|---|---|---|
| Second half of 2027 | Start of power service | Black Hills, October 6, 2026 |
| End of 2028 | 702 MW fuel cell facility fully operational | AEP, October 14, 2026 |
| 2030 | Project reaches peak load | Black Hills, October 6, 2026 |
These are future schedules published by each company, arranged in chronological order; the differences in dates do not indicate construction delays. Google has also not disclosed when the data center buildings as a whole will be completed. The announcement alone does not make it possible to determine what share each power source will account for when power delivery begins, or when the CCS equipment will start operating.
The power procurement contracts are long-term. AEP has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Google and plans to invest about $4 billion in the fuel cell facility. Construction is slated to begin in 2026, with full operation scheduled for the end of 2028. The contract with Black Hills, meanwhile, took effect on September 30, 2026, and runs through 2048. However, because it has not been disclosed how much AEP's roughly $4 billion overlaps with the $17 billion Google announced, the two figures cannot simply be added together.
The supply resources Black Hills will secure for this project, including reserve capacity, total 2.7 GW. The breakdown is up to 590 MW of grid-connected service and about 2.1 GW of third-party resources. The third-party resources will be managed through a dedicated small power grid, and the 2.7 GW figure indicates the scale of resources needed for power supply. It does not mean the data center's servers will actually consume 2.7 GW.
Black Hills also plans to invest $1.8 billion from 2027 to 2029 to build new natural gas-fired generation with a rated capacity of 564 MW. The 26 MW difference from the 590 MW maximum grid-connected service is to be covered through market purchases and other means. However, it is not clear from this announcement how AEP's 702 MW of fuel cells fit within the roughly 2.1 GW of third-party resources or the 2.7 GW of total supply resources. There is no basis for adding these figures together as independent generating capacity.
As this shows, the scale of procurement and the operating schedules for individual facilities have become concrete for Google's power supply, but the power mix at the start of supply and the CO₂ emission reduction effect remain unclear. How the buildout of large-scale power infrastructure affects local electricity rates and resource use will also be an important point in evaluating the project.
Cost allocation for power infrastructure and air cooling aim to limit local impact
According to Reuters' November 5 report, the announcement came as political resistance to data center expansion has grown following the U.S. midterm elections. In the United States, where AI data centers' power demand is surging, who pays for new power generation and transmission infrastructure has become a major issue. Google also laid out specific responses on electricity rates and the impact on local water resources.
Google says it will cover 100% of the cost of the electricity the data center uses, and will also pay for infrastructure costs directly required by the expansion of its operations. Black Hills has also put contractual protections in place to prevent costs from being passed on to existing customers. Specifically, in addition to mechanisms to ensure investment recovery, it has set up measures and collateral to guard against early contract termination, so that the costs of meeting the large power demand are not shifted to existing customers. These measures, however, apply to the costs associated with this project and do not guarantee existing customers' future electricity rates in general.
To limit the impact on water resources, Google also said it plans to use air cooling for the data center. The aim is to reduce reliance on cooling methods that use large amounts of water, but this is not a claim that water use will be zero. The announcement also did not disclose the facility's overall water use, so how much strain it will actually place on local water resources will need to be checked against operating results going forward. The allocation of power infrastructure costs and the choice of cooling method can be seen as efforts to limit the impact on the local community in different ways.
Google also revealed that it has held meetings with more than 200 local residents. It also says Albany County...
Correction: Google says Laramie County and School District 1 can expect property tax revenue on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. The announcement does not specify how many years that revenue would cover cumulatively. In addition to support for education and job training, there are plans to establish a community council in which partners such as Tallgrass Energy and Bloom Energy will participate.
The project is drawing attention as a plan to combine natural gas fuel cells with CCS to meet the large power demand of AI data centers. However, neither the $17 billion investment nor the introduction of 702 MW of fuel cells in itself means that generating capacity has been secured or that emissions reductions have been achieved. After power delivery begins in the second half of 2027, the key questions will be whether the fuel cells operate as scheduled, when the CO₂ capture equipment starts running, and what capture rate it achieves. If it can also be confirmed how the mechanisms to prevent cost pass-through to existing customers and the air-cooling approach affect water resources in practice, the power supply expansion and community consideration Google has presented can be evaluated on operating results rather than on plans.