Data centers have become so large that their power demands now rival every US state. Take Meta’s Hyperion AI data center, for example. When completed, the new AI data center will draw as much electricity as South Dakota.
Last week, Meta announced it would finance seven natural gas power plants — on top of the three it had already committed to building — to support the $27 billion data center. Combined, Louisiana’s 10 power plants will generate about 7.5 gigawatts of electricity, slightly more than the capacity of the state’s Mount Rushmore.
Like many technology companies, Meta has shown its weather and environmental trends over the years. It often publishes sustainability reports, and often touts its purchases of renewable energy. It successfully bought a nuclear power plant for 20 years.
Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana will test the company’s commitments.
Natural gas has been hailed as a “bridge fuel” – build fewer natural gas power plants now while renewables, batteries, and nuclear are getting their legs under you. That’s probably how Meta justifies the movement inside.
But people have been making the bridge fuel argument for decades, and it’s wearing thin. Renewables and batteries have fallen in price while gas engine prices have risen sharply. Meta has been a leading buyer of solar, batteries, and nuclear in recent years, making the decision to grow with natural gas even more confusing.
TechCrunch reached out to Meta. The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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Louisiana’s largest turbines will emit 12.4 million metric tons of CO2 into space every year, according to TechCrunch figures, based on data from the Department of Energy. That’s 50 percent more than Meta’s overall carbon footprint in 2024, the latest year such numbers are available.
That figure is an underestimate of the climate impact, too, since it doesn’t include leaks from the natural gas supply chain.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, warms the planet 84 times more than carbon dioxide. Even 0.2% leakage rates in the supply chain can make the impact of natural gas worse than coal. In the US, natural gas production and pipelines leak methane at a rate close to 3%. That’s really clean energy.
The company’s latest sustainability report makes no mention of methane leaks. It does not mention methane or natural gas at all. And yet fuel is poised to become one of the biggest contributors to the Meta’s carbon footprint in the coming years.
A company can stick to its climate promise and find a way to offset those carbon emissions with carbon credits. But now it will need more of them, as well as reliable calculations of how much methane will leak into the atmosphere to feed its new energy plants.
