Google to spend $17 billion on first Wyoming data center, powered by 702 MW fuel cells with carbon capture

Google said on November 5 it will invest $17 billion to build its first data center in Wyoming, a campus in Laramie County about eight miles south of Cheyenne, on a 716-acre site known locally as Project Tembo. Power will come in part from a planned 702-megawatt natural-gas fuel-cell plant with carbon capture and storage, and Google says it will pay for all of the electricity the campus uses.

Fuel cells plus carbon capture, fully running by end of 2028

The fuel-cell plant will be built by American Electric Power (AEP) using fuel cells made in the United States by Bloom Energy. AEP plans to invest about $4 billion in the facility under a 20-year power purchase agreement, with power service starting in the second half of 2027 and full operation by the end of 2028. Captured carbon dioxide will be piped to Tallgrass Energy's Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub for permanent underground storage. Google says the campus will be air-cooled to limit water use and expects hundreds of millions of dollars in new local property tax revenue.

Partners and the land deal

Google is developing the project with Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, AEP and developer Related Digital. AI infrastructure firm Crusoe said on November 6 that Google has acquired its data center site in southeast Wyoming; the financial terms were not disclosed. Crusoe is also developing another Google data center campus in Armstrong. Google has not disclosed the computing capacity of the Wyoming campus or a construction schedule.

Timing: voters just said no to data centers

The announcement came two days after voters backed limits on data center construction in 40 of 41 local ballot measures on November 3, and in a week when AI infrastructure stocks sold off sharply; Google shares fell 2.2 percent on November 5. OpenAI published a national community compact the same day pledging to cover the full electricity and infrastructure costs of future campuses it owns and operates. Google made no comparable nationwide pledge for Wyoming, but said it will form a community advisory council and pay for grid upgrades driven by the campus's growth.

(Sources: Google company blog; Reuters; American Electric Power announcements. Photo: file photo, an aerial view of a Google data center in Texas, not the Wyoming site.)