Google announced on November 5, 2026, that it will build its first Wyoming data center, a long-term $17 billion investment in Laramie County accompanied by new power, carbon-storage and community commitments.
The project is contracted with American Electric Power for a commercial-scale 702 MW fuel-cell development with carbon capture and storage. Google describes it as first of its kind and the largest planned development of its kind to date.
Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy and Related Digital are the other partners. Google will pay for 100% of the data center’s power use and cover infrastructure needs directly driven by its growth, making those cost responsibilities part of the investment plan.
Carbon Storage and Generation Design
The fuel cells will use an electrochemical reaction to convert natural gas into electricity, and Bloom Energy will manufacture them in the United States. The capture system is intended to remove a large majority of the development’s carbon emissions and store them permanently underground at Tallgrass’s nearby Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub.
A Tallgrass release dated January 20, 2022 said a Wyoming Energy Authority grant would support the hub’s development in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of eastern Wyoming. The hub was designed to capture, transport and sequester carbon dioxide across multiple states.
Google will also source electricity from gas generators operated by Tallgrass Energy and Black Hills Energy. A front-end engineering and design study will evaluate whether carbon capture can be fitted to Tallgrass’s combined-cycle turbines. Google says the Wyoming arrangement brings its total contracted CCS capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt.
Earlier CCS Work and Cooling Choices
Wyoming follows Google’s first U.S. carbon capture and storage project, the Broadwing Energy agreement announced on October 23, 2025, in Decatur, Illinois. Google agreed to buy most of the power from a planned gas plant there with more than 400 MW of generating capacity. The announcement describes a design to capture approximately 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions for permanent storage more than a mile underground in adjacent EPA-approved Class VI facilities, and Google’s hope of commercial operation by early 2030.
The Illinois project pairs carbon storage with a gas power plant, while Wyoming adds fuel-cell generation and a potential carbon-capture application to combined-cycle turbines. Together, the plans would extend Google’s CCS work across different generation designs as it contracts power for its data infrastructure.
The Wyoming facility will be air-cooled to minimize strain on local water resources, with local water-replenishment investments also planned. That choice has an energy trade-off: Google’s June 3, 2026, water stewardship policy says water cooling can reduce data-center energy use by approximately 10% compared with air cooling. The policy calls for air cooling or recycled water when a water source is at high risk.
Local Revenue and Community Commitments
Google projects that the development will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in local property taxes for Laramie County and School District 1. Its community investment plans cover K-12 education, workforce development and initiatives intended to accelerate Wyoming’s economy, with targeted grants supporting STEM education, local entrepreneurs and skilled-trades training.
At a community meeting in downtown Cheyenne, Google met with more than 200 Laramie County residents. Their feedback covered a fuller picture of the project’s economic benefits, career and job-skilling opportunities, and the wider impact of data-center growth on Cheyenne. Google, Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, Related Digital, AEP and Bloom Energy are establishing a Community Council intended to address those growth concerns.
For Laramie County, the central issue is now execution: the property-tax revenue is a projection, and the power, carbon-storage and community arrangements must be delivered alongside the data-center investment.
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