Meta Bought 1 GW of Solar This Week (techcrunch.com)

Meta signed three solar deals this week totaling nearly 1 GW—part of more than 3 GW of solar capacity it has procured this year—to power its expanding AI-driven data center load. The agreements include a 600 MW purchase from a large solar farm near Lubbock, Texas (commercial operations expected in 2027) and two Louisiana contracts for the environmental attributes of 385 MW that should be completed about two years from now. The Texas project will feed the local grid rather than connect directly to Meta’s facilities; the Louisiana purchases are for environmental attribute certificates (EACs), not the physical electrons. For the AI/ML community this underscores two trends: hyperscalers are rapidly scaling renewable buys as model training and inference drive huge electricity demand, and solar is favored because it’s relatively cheap and fast to build. But the deals also highlight a contentious technical and accounting issue—EACs (or RECs) let companies claim emissions offsets without necessarily adding new renewable capacity or changing marginal grid emissions. Experts warn EACs can obscure true carbon footprints and offer less “additionality” than physical power purchase agreements or investments that clearly expand clean capacity. If AI’s electricity appetite keeps rising, the community will increasingly need procurement strategies that ensure new renewables and real carbon reductions, not just certificate-based offsets.