Opponents of a Google data center in Botetourt County have been frustrated by a lack of information, including how it will draw power.
The tech giant has not released much specific information about a potential data center it plans to build near Daleville since it purchased more than 300 acres in the Greenfield industrial park last year. Many of the details are shielded by non-disclosure agreements with local government agencies and other partners. But Google formally announced its intentions around the data center with a press release last month, and company officials are beginning to discuss the project.
"This is, I would say, kind of in the middle scale for Google data centers," said Clay Allsop, regional head of data center public affairs for" Google. "The exact power usage we still don't know quite yet. We're working on power agreements with our utility partners."
Allsop compared the Botetourt County data center complex with its facility in Lenoir, North Carolina, which went online in 2007. In 2015, Google announced it would purchase energy from a nearby Duke Energy solar farm to power parts of that facility.
"For reference, we have procured 23 gigawatts of carbon-free power for our data center portfolio," Allsop said. "We do that by partnering with utility providers on clean energy procurement. The specifics for this site still to be determined. The site is in Virginia; our power agreements with ApCo will comply with the Va Clean Economy Act."
The Clean Economy Act phases out fossil fuels by 2050, which suggests Google will power the Daleville facility with renewables like solar or wind.
Another Google spokesperson said the company frequently functions as a "catalyst to bring clean power onto grid sooner."
Critics are skeptical. A member of the Southwest Virginia Data Center Transparency Alliance pointed to Texas, where Google is reportedly working with a company to build a large natural gas-fired power plant to power at least some of a data center campus there.
Google has signed an agreement to buy power from a wind farm now under construction in another part of the county. That power won't go directly to the data center, however, as it's part of Dominion Energy's territory, and not Appalachian Power.
