Is anyone in the US using solar and wind to power new datacenters?
Yes — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are all doing it, accounting for 98.7% of large-scale US corporate renewable PPAs, with a combined 84 GW of solar and wind under contract to power their data centers.
Renewables are the dominant procurement strategy for hyperscalers, but intermittency means they can't replace gas or nuclear for round-the-clock data center uptime — which is exactly why the gas buildout this story describes is still happening alongside them.
4 details4 sources2 disagreements
- Google is building a Minnesota data center backed by 1,400 MW of wind, 200 MW of solar, and 300 MW of battery storage from Xcel Energy, announced February 2026.
- Google acquired Intersect Power for $4.75 billion in March 2026 to develop US campuses where solar and wind farms sit directly adjacent to data centers — first phase expected online 2026–2027.
- Microsoft signed an 8-year deal with Qcells for 12 GW of solar; TotalEnergies signed long-term PPAs to deliver 1 GW of solar to Google's Texas data centers.
- Solar and wind currently supply roughly 24% of US data center electricity, but 24/7 uptime requirements mean storage or firm power (gas, nuclear) is still needed to fill gaps when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing.
Room for disagreement
- Critics argue most corporate renewable PPAs are accounting tools — electrons flow to the grid, not directly to the data center — so claims of 'solar-powered' facilities can overstate how much clean energy actually runs the machines on any given hour.
- Hyperscalers say co-location campuses (solar farm next to data center, bypassing the grid) solve the matching problem; skeptics counter that these projects are still early-stage and won't scale fast enough to meet the demand surge this story describes.
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