ON-PREM

The air turns brown when bit barns come to town … deep in the heart of Texas

Never mind the fact that datacenter environmental concerns have come under growing scrutiny across the United States. Microsoft has just inked a deal with fossil fuel giant Chevron to supply one of the largest single-capacity additions to its datacenter fleet with 2.67 gigawatts of natural gas power for a full two decades.

Chevron said today that it signed a two-decade power purchase agreement with Microsoft through its subsidiary Energy Forge One to supply 2.67 GW of power for a new datacenter project in West Texas dubbed Project Kilby. The natural gas turbines to be constructed on the datacenter’s site will sit behind-the-meter (Microsoft gets access to the power without it flowing through the grid first) and will be “among the largest co-located natural gas power and data center developments in the U.S.,” according to Chevron.

Microsoft’s own press release on the matter, which doesn’t mention Chevron or Energy Forge One by name but does admit the new facility “will operate with a co-located natural gas power facility,” identified Pecos as the West Texas location where the bit barn will be built. The self-proclaimed birthplace of the rodeo is also a West Texas hub for agriculture and ranching, among other Texas-sized industries.

Microsoft confirmed to The Register that, despite it not mentioning Chevron in the announcement, the power purchase agreement does concern the Pecos facility. 

The facility will be “one of the largest single-capacity additions” to Microsoft’s datacenter fleet “in our history,” according to Redmond’s release, and the company is trying hard to lean into its desire to be a good neighbor to the people of Pecos as it spends the next few years building the massive facility. 

Shouldn’t good neighbors care about air and water quality?

“We know that being a good neighbor isn’t something you say,” Microsoft wrote in an open letter to the people of Pecos alongside its announcement of the new datacenter. “It’s something you prove over time.” 

That letter and the announcement take pains to point out all the good things Microsoft has done for the communities where it plunked down massive datacenters, and it wants the locals to know that the Pecos facility will be no different. Why, the very fact it’s building multiple gigawatts of natural gas power for itself proves just that! 

Building its own energy infrastructure, says Microsoft, will prevent locals from having to pay more for power. Additionally, the company anticipates eventually connecting its turbines to the grid and serving as a broader energy source, too. 

According to Chevron, the turbines being deployed for the Pecos datacenter include noise and light impact mitigations as well as “selective catalytic reduction” systems that reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Not eliminate, mind you - just reduce. 

To get an idea of the scale of what Microsoft is planning to deploy with Chevron in Pecos, let’s consider the gas turbine generators that xAI’s Colossus AI datacenter installed in Memphis, Tennessee. That facility saw the installation of just 150 megawatts of gas turbines - roughly one eighteenth the size of Microsoft’s planned Pecos gas plant. 

Even at that small a scale, the xAI datacenter has still become the subject of a lawsuit [PDF] alleging that the facility is belching way too much smog into local communities for the air to be healthy and calling for it to be shut down. Emissions mitigations or not, one can't imagine the prairie sky around the Pecos datacenter will be as clear and high as it once was after the facility is completed.

It’s worth pointing out that some of the turbines being deployed to Pecos will be manufactured by the deceptively named Solar Turbines, which actually builds gas power systems. According to reports and photographs out of the xAI Memphis facility, Solar Turbines also supplied gas turbines for Colossus. 

Then there’s the water concerns: Microsoft and Chevron both called attention to their plans to minimize water usage in Pecos, which lies in a part of Texas prone to drought and with limited access to fresh, potable water. 

“We are also designing our operations to minimize reliance on freshwater sources by utilizing nonpotable water where possible,” Microsoft noted. The company will rely on closed-loop cooling systems that will “significantly reduce water requirements.” 

As for the gas plant planned for the site, Chevron said that its facility will use “non-potable, brackish groundwater sources for power plant operations” instead of freshwater, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. 

Brackish groundwater, located in massive, salty, underground aquifers, is a major source of water for dry, dusty West Texas, and has been for some time. Desalination of brackish groundwater has been suggested [PDF] as a source of drinking water for the town and the surrounding region, raising questions about whether datacenters and gas power plants sucking it up to cool their jets are sustainable. 

Microsoft didn’t want to answer any of the questions we put to it aside from confirming Chevron’s press release related to the Pecos datacenter; Chevron didn’t respond.  ®