Prometheus Hyperscale is looking to carbon removal to counterbalance the emissions of a planned 1.2-GW natural gas-powered datacenter in Evanston, Wyoming.
The developer has tapped Frontier Carbon Solutions LLC to capture and store biogenic CO2 to offset the emissions of gas-fired generation, the partners announced May 6. PureWest Energy LLC has agreed to supply low-carbon gas to the datacenter project.
The partnership represents a new strategy to meet datacenter tenants' emissions criteria under the current constraints of the energy system, which include permitting delays, equipment shortages and the intermittency of renewable generation.
Over the past three years, the electricity usage of artificial intelligence computing has spiked, spurring the development of dozens of new gas-fired power plants in the US. Some companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., have proposed to meet hyperscalers' demand for clean energy by directly capturing the CO2 emissions of gas generation. But carbon capture technology has yet to be commercially deployed on a large gas plant.
Separately, Microsoft Corp. has been buying carbon removal credits in furtherance of its climate goals, though the tech company has not tied these purchases to any of its datacenters.
Prometheus, by contrast, plans to procure unabated gas generation and buy carbon credits as part of its overall service to datacenter tenants.
"I think we're at a moment in time when people need to be very creative about how they're serving both the power need, but then also companies' decarbonization goals," Prometheus' president, Trevor Neilson, said in an interview. "We think that this partnership can become a model for others. I hope people will copy this."
Prometheus has already hired a significant independent power producer to develop a gas plant for the datacenter, Neilson said.
Prometheus expects to start up its first 150 MW of servers in 2027 before scaling to 650 MW by the end of 2028 and 1.2 GW by mid-2029, Neilson added.
For the later phases, the developer plans to add renewable and nuclear generation to its portfolio. In 2024, Prometheus signed a non-binding agreement to purchase 100 MW of electricity from microreactor company Oklo Inc.
Frontier plans to capture CO2 from ethanol plants and other facilities and transport the gas by rail to southeastern Wyoming. There, Frontier has already secured permits to inject CO2 thousands of feet underground. The carbon management company will initially remove 500,000 tons of CO2 per year on behalf of Prometheus, the partners said.
