Meta Platforms Embraces Geothermal Energy to Power US Data Centers

Meta Platforms strikes geothermal energy deal to power US data centers

Aug 26 - Facebook owner Meta Platforms struck a deal to buy geothermal power from Sage Geosystems to supply its U.S. data centers, it said on Monday, as it races to build out the infrastructure to support its massive investments in energy-hungry artificial intelligence. The first phase of the 150-megawatt project should be operational by 2027 and "significantly" expand the use of geothermal power in the United States, the social media company said. The location has yet to be determined, but the companies said it will be east of the Rocky Mountains. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Geothermal power is a renewable energy source that uses the Earth's internal heat to produce electricity and heat water. One-hundred and fifty megawatts is roughly enough electricity to power 38,000 homes. Meta's announcement, made as part of a U.S. Department of Energy event on geothermal development, comes as President Joe Biden's administration is asking big technology companies to invest in new clean power generation to cover their surging electricity demand. That surge has been driven by the adoption of technologies like generative AI that require large amounts of electricity to power data centers, a development that could complicate Biden's target of decarbonizing the power sector by 2035 to fight climate change. Sage, which is based in Houston, is a four-year-old startup developing next-generation technology that it says can be deployed in more locations than traditional geothermal, which requires naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water and accounts for 0.4% of U.S. power generation. The company is backed by oil and gas firms Chesapeake Energy and Nabors Industries and venture capital firms Virya and Helium-3 Ventures. The project for Meta would be Sage's largest to date by far. The company said it first validated the technology in the field just two years ago. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company expected the Sage Geosystems energy to feed the power grid, rather than directly supplying any specific data center. Meta has been scrambling to overhaul and build out infrastructure to accommodate its push into generative AI for the last several years, refashioning its data centers to support the types of chips best suited to AI workloads. That AI push has caused the company's expenses to spike. Last month, Meta forecast 2024 capital expenditure would come in between $37 billion and $40 billion, while cautioning that infrastructure costs would continue to be a "significant driver" of expense growth in 2025.

Meta Platforms strikes geothermal energy deal to power US data centers

Meta has partnered with Sage Geosystems to acquire geothermal power for its U.S. data centers. The 150-megawatt project, set to commence by 2027, aims to support Meta's growing AI infrastructure. This collaboration signifies a substantial advancement in geothermal energy in the U.S., highlighting Meta's commitment to sustainable energy sources.Facebook owner Meta Platforms struck a deal to buy geothermal power from Sage Geosystems to supply its U.S. data centers, it said on Monday, as it races to build out the infrastructure to support its massive investments in energy-hungry artificial intelligence. The first phase of the 150-megawatt project should be operational by 2027 and "significantly" expand the use of geothermal power in the United States, the social media company said. The location has yet to be determined, but the companies said it will be east of the Rocky Mountains. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Geothermal power is a renewable energy source that uses the Earth's internal heat to produce electricity and heat water. One-hundred and fifty megawatts is roughly enough electricity to power 38,000 homes. Meta's announcement, made as part of a U.S. Department of Energy event on geothermal development, comes as President Joe Biden's administration is asking big technology companies to invest in new clean power generation to cover their surging electricity demand. That surge has been driven by the adoption of technologies like generative AI that require large amounts of electricity to power data centers, a development that could complicate Biden's target of decarbonizing the power sector by 2035 to fight climate change. Sage, which is based in Houston, is a four-year-old startup developing next-generation technology that it says can be deployed in more locations than traditional geothermal, which requires naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water and accounts for 0.4% of U.S. power generation. The company is backed by oil and gas firms Chesapeake Energy and Nabors Industries and venture capital firms Virya and Helium-3 Ventures. The project for Meta would be Sage's largest to date by far. The company said it first validated the technology in the field just two years ago. A Meta spokesperson told the company expected the Sage Geosystems energy to feed the power grid, rather than directly supplying any specific data center. Meta has been scrambling to overhaul and build out infrastructure to accommodate its push into generative AI for the last several years, refashioning its data centers to support the types of chips best suited to AI workloads. That AI push has caused the company's expenses to spike. Last month, Meta forecast 2024 capital expenditure would come in between $37 billion and $40 billion, while cautioning that infrastructure costs would continue to be a "significant driver" of expense growth in 2025.

Meta Taps Geothermal Energy As Power-Hungry Data Centers Strain the Grid

Meta will power a portion of its data centers with geothermal energy by 2027. The landmark agreement with Sage Geosystems will be the first major use of geothermal east of the Rocky Mountains, The Hill reports. Most geothermal power plants in the US are in western states and Hawaii, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Sage's technology makes it possible to expand access to geothermal energy across the US, which is a "significant advancement for the clean energy sector... promising a new era of reliable, sustainable baseload power and enhanced grid stability," Meta says. The energy will feed the power grid the data centers pull from, Reuters reports. The project will deliver "up to 150 MW of power," which is a likely a tiny fraction of Meta's total energy requirements. The Facebook maker says it has over 12,000 MW in renewable energy projects. Sage was founded by two former Shell Oil executives in 2020. Its Geopressured Geothermal System (GGS) stores energy in deep cavities of the earth, and can hold power for two- to three-times longer than lithium-ion batteries. The deal with Meta will be the company's largest of its kind to date, using technology that was first field tested just two years ago. "This builds on our work towards a zero-carbon economy with solutions that create a healthier planet for all," says Meta. The Biden Administration has been working with Big Tech companies to invest in clean power. Electricity demands have surged as Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and others rapidly build data centers amid a boom in AI technologies. Microsoft's electricity and water usage hit an all-time high in 2023, which it says was primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI." Immersion cooling can also reduce data center energy consumption by up to 50%, according to Nvidia partner Sustainable Metal Cloud and as reported by CNBC.

Meta Platforms strikes geothermal energy deal to power US data centers

Geothermal power is a renewable energy source that uses the Earth's internal heat to produce electricity and heat water. One-hundred and fifty megawatts is roughly enough electricity to power 38,000 homes. Meta's announcement, made as part of a U.S. Department of Energy event on geothermal development, comes as President Joe Biden's administration is asking big technology companies to invest in new clean power generation to cover their surging electricity demand. That surge has been driven by the adoption of technologies like generative AI that require large amounts of electricity to power data centers, a development that could complicate Biden's target of decarbonizing the power sector by 2035 to fight climate change. Sage, which is based in Houston, is a four-year-old startup developing next-generation technology that it says can be deployed in more locations than traditional geothermal, which requires naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water and accounts for 0.4% of U.S. power generation. The company is backed by oil and gas firms Chesapeake Energy and Nabors Industries and venture capital firms Virya and Helium-3 Ventures. The project for Meta would be Sage's largest to date by far. The company said it first validated the technology in the field just two years ago. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company expected the Sage Geosystems energy to feed the power grid, rather than directly supplying any specific data center. Meta has been scrambling to overhaul and build out infrastructure to accommodate its push into generative AI for the last several years, refashioning its data centers to support the types of chips best suited to AI workloads. That AI push has caused the company's expenses to spike. Last month, Meta forecast 2024 capital expenditure would come in between $37 billion and $40 billion, while cautioning that infrastructure costs would continue to be a "significant driver" of expense growth in 2025. (Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Nichola Groom in New YorkEditing by Matthew Lewis)

Meta strikes deal for first major use of next-gen geothermal power east of the Rockies

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will by 2027 power data centers using geothermal energy storage, according to a power purchase deal announced on Monday. Meta's partner in the deal, Sage Geosystems, is a company run by three former Shell Oil executives who have sought to use their experience in drilling and fracking wells to build out forms of energy storage based in using manmade cavities within the earth as a kind of battery that can store electricity for two to three times as long as lithium-ion. For tech companies like Meta, clean baseload power is essential to keeping its climate commitments while also meeting the staggering power demands from their ambitions in training new artificial intelligence (AI) models. Sage sees this form of energy storage as a key step toward next-gen geothermal energy, which relies on the technology of oil and gas fracking to tap the Earth's buried heat for industrial or electric power. Earlier in August, Sage announced a deal with the San Miguel Electric Cooperative, a South Texas coal mining and power company. The company agreed to host a 3 megawatt pilot project in exchange for a share of royalties with an eye toward potentially standing up a geothermal plant of its own in the coming years. That deal, however, is far smaller than the one Sage just inked with Meta, which would commit the energy company to begin to provide an ultimate goal of 150 megawatts of power, or 50 times as much as it hopes to produce at San Miguel, within three years. The method companies like Sage use is distinct from hydrothermal energy, the traditional form of geothermal energy seen across geologically active regions like the U.S. West Coast and the nations of Iceland and South Korea. Hydrothermal energy relies on tapping existing underwater conduits of superheated water to run electric turbines -- a form of power that is dependent on having, and finding, the right underground geology. Next-generation geothermal power, by contrast, seeks to create that geology by drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and the Energy Department (DOE) has argued that it could soon begin to serve as a clean, on-demand bulwark to the more variable power offered by wind and solar energy. A March study by the DOE found that next-gen geothermal energy could power the equivalent of 4 million households by 2030, largely by adapting existing off-the-shelf technology -- and build to the equivalent of 80 to 260 million homes by midcentury. That may be an underestimate, Energy Department Loan Programs Office (LPO) head Jigar Shah told The Hill at the time of the report launch. "The numbers could be quite a bit larger," he said. Getting a geothermal development snowball rolling, the LPO estimated, would cost up to $25 billion in investment within the next six years -- a sum that is a little less than three-quarters of the $35 million required to complete a single nuclear complex, the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant. Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk was also at the deal announcement on behalf of the Next Generation Geothermal Development workshop. In a statement, Turk pointed to the role geothermal could play in providing zero carbon, on-demand power to an ever-more-electrified economy. "The U.S. has seen unprecedented growth in demand for energy as our economy grows, the manufacturing sector booms thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration's Investing in America agenda, and new industries like AI expand," Turk said. With the increased demand pulling more clean energy onto the grid, Turk called geothermal "a game-changer as we work to grow our clean power supply."

Meta Platforms strikes geothermal energy deal with Sage Geosystems to power U.S. data centres

Facebook owner Meta Platforms struck a deal to buy up to 150 MW of geothermal power from Sage Geosystems to supply its U.S. data centres, it said in a statement on Monday, as it races to build out the infrastructure to support its massive investments in energy-hungry artificial intelligence. The first phase of the project should be operational by 2027 and should "significantly" expand the use of geothermal power in the United States, the social media company said. Meta's announcement, made as part of a U.S. Department of Energy event on geothermal development, comes as President Joe Biden's administration is asking big technology companies to invest in new climate-friendly power generation to cover their surging electricity demand. (Unravel the complexities of our digital world on The Interface podcast, where business leaders and scientists share insights that shape tomorrow's innovation. The Interface is also available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.) Nvidia's new AI chip delay could affect Microsoft, Google, Meta: Report That surge has been driven by the adoption of technologies like generative AI that require power-hungry data centres. This development could complicate Biden's target of decarbonising the power sector by 2035 to fight climate change. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company expected the Sage Geosystems energy to be part of the grid, rather than directly supplying any specific data centres. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read Comments

Meta Platforms strikes geothermal energy deal with Sage Geosystems to power US data centers

-Facebook owner Meta Platforms struck a deal to buy up to 150 MW of geothermal power from Sage Geosystems to supply its U.S. data centers, it said in a statement on Monday, as it races to build out the infrastructure to support its massive investments in energy-hungry artificial intelligence. The first phase of the project should be operational by 2027 and should "significantly" expand the use of geothermal power in the United States, the social media company said.

Meta Partners With Sage To Expand Geothermal Energy In US: Details - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

The agreement marks the first large-scale use of next-gen geothermal energy east of the Rockies, boosting clean power. Meta Platforms, Inc. META and Sage Geosystems disclosed a new agreement at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Catalyzing Next Generation Geothermal Development Workshop to expand geothermal power in the U.S. significantly. The deal will significantly expand geothermal power use in the U.S., marking the first deployment of next-generation geothermal energy east of the Rocky Mountains. The partnership will provide up to 150 MW of new geothermal baseload power to support Meta's data center expansion. Meta also continues to invest in carbon-free power for its data centers. The first phase of this project is set to be operational by 2027. Read: Meta's Apple Vision Pro Rival Reportedly Canceled After A Review Meeting Between Mark Zuckerberg, CTO Andrew Bosworth, And Others: 'Decisions Like This Happen All The Time...' The Sage-Meta partnership is a key step in advancing sustainable energy, reinforcing Sage's geothermal leadership and Meta's commitment to clean energy. Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems, said, "As energy demand continues to grow, the need for reliable, resilient and sustainable power is paramount and our partnership with Meta underscores the critical need for innovative and sustainable energy solutions like ours." U.S. Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk stated, "The U.S. has seen unprecedented growth in demand for energy as our economy grows, the manufacturing sector booms thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration's Investing in America agenda, and new industries like AI expand." "The Administration views this increased demand as a huge opportunity to add more clean, firm power to the grid and geothermal energy is a game-changer as we work to grow our clean power supply." Investors can gain access to the stock via Direxion Daily META Bull 2X Shares METU and Fidelity MSCI Communication Services Index ETF FCOM. Price Action: META shares are down 0.04% at $520.90 premarket at the last check Tuesday. Image via Shutterstock Read Next: Is Telegram Safer Than WhatsApp Or Signal? App Might Not Be So Private After All: Report Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs