- Oracle dropped its plans for a natural gas plant at its OpenAI data center in New Mexico.
- The gas plant raised questions from the surrounding community about water use and air pollution.
- Community activists aren't yet convinced of the site's new energy plan.
Oracle is ditching a contentious plan to construct a natural gas plant to power one of its newest data centers.
Instead, Oracle said last week that it will partner with fuel-cell maker Bloom Energy to generate on-site electricity.
Dubbed Project Jupiter, the site in New Mexico is part of Oracle and OpenAI's $300 billion cloud computing contract.
Project Jupiter's potential environmental impact has been the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation by the local community for months.
In a press release last week, the tech giant said Bloom's technology would "dramatically reduce water use" and "protect local air quality" at the data center.
The abrupt change in plans is emblematic of the unpredictable nature of the AI infrastructure buildout. That unpredictability is only intensifying as Big Tech companies race to build data centers and fight for increasingly scarce electricity resources to power them.
"Everybody's trying to build capacity to meet this demand," said Patrick Hughes, senior vice president of industry affairs at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
Hughes called the pace of data center construction "unprecedented" and likened the AI race and power scramble to the Wild West.
Bring your own power
Utilities across the country have been overwhelmed with requests from data centers to connect to the grid. Rather than risk yearslong waits to come online, many developers are turning to "BYOP" — bring your own power — and planning to self-supply electricity on-site.
Oracle is betting big on BYOP. Besides Project Jupiter, the company has announced plans to build natural gas plants at two of its other data center projects with OpenAI. Both are located in Texas.
In October, Project Jupiter developers filed air quality permit applications for a natural gas plant with the New Mexico Environment Department. The applications were still pending when they were withdrawn on April 27, according to NMED's online records database.
In a press release last week, Oracle cited its commitment to "community priorities" and touted Bloom's technology, which it said will help reduce the data center's water use and emissions.
Hughes couldn't speak to Oracle's canceled natural gas project, though he said data centers that want to build their own power plants face a litany of constraints.
"You have to balance supply chain concerns and availability, the cost, the speed at which you can get the permits and build it," he said.
Oracle's Project Jupiter faces opposition
Project Jupiter had been snagged by federal and state regulators in the weeks leading up to the cancellation announcement.
In March and April, both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the New Mexico State Land Office denied requests related to a proposed natural gas pipeline that would deliver fuel to Project Jupiter.
Local pushback has also become an issue. Across the country, opposition to data centers has grown as local communities protest rising power bills, noise pollution, and the use of local resources.
In March, NMED said it would need to schedule a public hearing to address the "significant" amount of comments it received regarding the Project Jupiter gas plant. The agency said it had received more than 7,000 comments on Project Jupiter's permit applications, many of them regarding the plant's potential impact on water use and air quality.
That hearing, scheduled for the coming months, will no longer be held.
Oracle's data center faces environmental concerns
Project Jupiter also faces two lawsuits brought by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center on behalf of local activists. NMELC says the officials approved the data center before crucial environmental, water, and community-impact assessments were conducted.
In March, a New Mexico state court struck down the county's request to dismiss the initial suit.
In an interview with Business Insider, NMELC staff attorney Kacey Hovden questioned the reasoning behind Project Jupiter's sudden decision to pivot.
"They say they're responding to community concerns, but these have been things that have been voiced now for almost a year," Hovden said. "Why didn't they do this in the beginning?"
NMELC has the same concerns about Bloom Energy's fuel cell technology as it had about the natural gas plant, she added.
"I don't want to be misconstrued," Hovden said. "This isn't a smart choice for public health either."
Fuel cells can be powered by various fuels, though most use hydrogen derived from natural gas. Project Jupiter's fuel cells will use natural gas, according to new permit applications filed with NMED last month.
Bloom Energy contends that its technology helps reduce emissions from natural gas use.
However, fuel cell technology has not been deployed at the scale required by a data center like Project Jupiter.
Oracle said its partnership with Bloom Energy could power its data center with up to 2.8 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power more than 2 million homes, or over 7,000 Tesla Model 3s, according to the Department of Energy.
This is Bloom Energy's biggest data center partnership to date. In 2024, Bloom announced an 80 megawatt project in South Korea — a tiny fraction of Project Jupiter's scale. In a press release at the time, Bloom said it would be the "world's largest fuel cell installation."
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