Data centers are a buzzy topic in the energy industry, and while there is still a lot of fuzziness about what will actually get built and how much natural-gas-fired power will be needed to support these projects, there’s no doubt that major technology companies are well along in planning a number of massive data centers across the country. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll offer a snapshot of the plans announced by tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook).
As we’ve discussed in several blogs over the past few months (see Options Open and We Should Be Friends), the race to site, build and open data centers to support artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services and other high-tech needs is fierce. It’s rife with hopes and expectations that are unlikely to be fully realized, and there are a lot of proposed projects that may or may not get built. To help separate the signal from the noise, we thought it would be best to look at what’s being proposed by four large mega-tech companies that have proven they have the financial and organizational wherewithal to make big things happen.
Figure 1. Proposed Data Centers for Technology Giants. Source: RBN
Here is a roundup of major data center projects by the four tech giants noted earlier that have been started or proposed, as shown in Figure 1 above.
Microsoft
Microsoft has added more than 2 gigawatts (GW) of data center capacity in the past 12 months and has more than 400 data centers across 70 regions globally, the company said in its July 30 earnings announcement. The company set aside $80 billion for data centers in fiscal year 2025, with more than $40 billion earmarked for the U.S. Microsoft opened its first data center on its Redmond, WA, campus in 1989 — the year Taylor Swift was born (and the title of one of her most popular albums: 1989.) In April, Microsoft paused some of its data center construction, including a $1 billion project in Ohio, and slowed projects in Wisconsin. Despite these pauses, Microsoft executives said they’re committed to spending on projects this year.
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