AI drives carbon projects

Carbon capture works like an exhaust filter for power plants: it traps carbon dioxide before it reaches the air and stores it underground. That technology is getting a new push as artificial intelligence data centers hunt for round-the-clock electricity that wind and solar alone do not always provide. (axios.com) Google said on October 23, 2025 that it agreed to buy most of the power from Broadwing Energy, a planned more than 400-megawatt natural gas plant in Decatur, Illinois, that aims to capture and permanently store about 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions. Google said the plant would support the regional grid serving its Midwest data centers. (blog.google) That deal put a major technology company behind a gas plant with carbon capture at a time when utilities and oil companies were looking for new ways to serve data-center demand. Axios reported on April 13 that recent company statements and coverage have tied similar efforts to Google, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Meta. (axios.com) ExxonMobil moved into the same lane in December 2025, when NextEra Energy said it was partnering with Exxon to develop a 1.2-gigawatt gas plant with carbon capture for a future hyperscale data-center customer. NextEra said at the time there was no signed customer agreement yet. (cnbc.com) Chevron is pitching a different model: building gas power next to data centers instead of relying only on the grid. Reuters reported on March 31, 2026 that Microsoft, Chevron and Engine No. 1 entered an exclusivity agreement for power generation and supply tied to a proposed West Texas project. (msn.com) Bloomberg reported the proposed Texas plant could cost about $7 billion and initially generate 2,500 megawatts for a large Microsoft data-center campus. Chevron had already said in November 2025 that its first natural-gas project for an artificial-intelligence data center would be built in West Texas, with startup targeted for 2027. (bloomberg.com) (finance.yahoo.com) Meta has leaned even harder into gas. TechCrunch reported on April 1, 2026 that Meta had agreed to fund seven new natural-gas plants, on top of three already planned, to support its Louisiana data-center buildout, for about 7.5 gigawatts of capacity in total. (techcrunch.com) The climate argument for carbon capture is straightforward: if gas plants are going to be built for artificial intelligence, trapping part of their emissions would cut the damage compared with venting all of it. The business problem is also straightforward: Axios reported the technology has been discussed for years but has often been too expensive to deploy at scale. (axios.com) Environmental groups say the new power buildout is still pushing hyperscalers toward more fossil-fuel use, even when carbon capture is attached. Stand.earth said on April 13, 2026 that three recently announced methane-gas projects for Microsoft’s planned artificial-intelligence data centers could lift the company’s data-center carbon footprint by 160% to about 25.25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2028. (stand.earth) Stand.earth said Microsoft’s data-center pollution was about 7.87 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in fiscal 2023, which is the baseline its new estimate builds from. Microsoft has not endorsed Stand.earth’s projection, and the group’s release frames it as advocacy research rather than a company filing. (stand.earth 1) (stand.earth 2) The result is a power scramble with two tracks running at once: technology companies are signing up for new electricity, and energy companies are reviving carbon-capture projects that had struggled to find buyers. The next test is whether these plants actually get built on the timelines companies are now putting in front of investors and regulators. (axios.com) (blog.google)