Meta bought 1 GW of solar this week

Meta signed three deals this week to acquire nearly 1 gigawatt of solar energy because it races to power its lofty AI ambitions.

The trio of agreements brings Meta’s total solar purchases to over 3 gigawatts of capability this yr. Solar is reasonable and quick to construct, and consequently, it has turn out to be a go-to power source for tech firms as their data center fleets multiply in size.

Meta yesterday announced two agreements in Louisiana that see it buying the environmental attributes of a combined 385 megawatts of electricity. Each projects are expected to be accomplished two years from now.

They follow on the heels of a bigger deal announced Monday by which Meta bought 600 megawatts from an enormous solar farm near Lubbock, Texas. The project can even start industrial operations in 2027.

While the Texas power plant won’t connect on to Meta data centers, it is going to feed into the local grid, offsetting use by the facilities.

The Louisiana deals, though, involve purchasing of certificates that allow Meta to offset its carbon-intensive sources of power. 

Such environmental attribute certificates (EACs), sometimes called renewable energy certificates, have been criticized by experts for obscuring the true carbon footprint of tech firms’ operations, which have ballooned as AI has driven up electricity use.

EACs were introduced years ago when renewables were costly relative to fossil fuel generators. They let anyone buy the electricity, but additionally gave firms an choice to pay extra to offset their very own emissions — and offset the upper costs of renewable power. They helped encourage developers to construct more renewable projects.

But the price of recent solar and wind has dropped dramatically since then, with renewables undercutting recent fossil power and sometimes existing coal and natural gas power plants. EACs don’t provide the identical incentive as before, and experts query how much additional renewable power they stimulate. 

If firms truly need to offset their recent energy use from AI, they must be encouraging developers to construct recent renewable capability, experts argue.