Last week, Google signed the world’s largest clean energy deal for hydropower, establishing what could be the first major lifeline to an industry facing many of the same problems that plagued nuclear power for much of the past decade.
As part of the 20-year power purchase agreements, Google agreed to pay Brookfield Asset Management $3 billion for up to 3 gigawatts of electricity from two hydropower plants in Pennsylvania. Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s head of data center energy, said in a statement that “hydropower is a proven, low-cost technology, offering dependable, homegrown, carbon-free electricity that creates jobs and builds a stronger grid for all.”
The deal comes as nearly one-quarter of U.S. hydroelectric stations are coming up for relicensing, a costly process that can take nearly a decade. With limited government support, competition from cheap natural gas and renewables, and few customers willing to pay a premium for the dispatchable, baseload power that hydropower dams provide, facilities are closing.
Upward of 60 hydroelectric plants have surrendered licenses in recent years, according to the National Hydropower Association. And roughly 17 GW of hydropower generation is up for relicensing, equal to about 40% of the non-federal fleet. (The ownership of the nation’s 100 GW fleet is split in half between the federal government and commercial and state owners.)
“I’m surprised that it’s taken this long” for a major tech buyer to go after hydro, Malcolm Woolf, the National Hydropower Association’s chief executive, told Latitude Media. “Frankly, I was expecting more of these deals earlier because hydropower is such a good complement for variable wind and solar.”
Traditionally, he said, hydroelectric dams’ provided pumped storage for excess nuclear power at night, when reactors kept cranking as demand dropped. Now hydropower stations serve a similar — though inverse — role for wind and solar, helping to store excess power when the sun is out during the day and opening the gates to crank out electrons at night when the supply from photovoltaic panels drops below demand.
Hydropower offers another potential advantage to hyperscalers: the water can be diverted to quench data centers’ thirst for ambient cooling. Meta is facing scrutiny for its data centers’ water usage following a New York Times investigation last week that found a community’s wells ran dry after the Facebook owner set up server farms nearby.
Google isn’t the first tech company to see the value in hydropower. In 2023, the data center company Iron Mountain entered a 10-year power purchase agreement with the hydropower producer Rye Development for 150 MW of electricity.
But at 20 times the volume of electrons, the Google deal sets a different standard — one that Jennifer Garson, the former director of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, said could be a model for future deals.
“It’s a good thing, this coupling of a potentially patient customer with a higher willingness to pay, and power that’s closer to baseload than solar and wind,” Garson told Latitude Media. “It’s a massive boost for hydro at a time when it’s been trying to think about how to maintain the existing fleet.”
