Meta's natural gas surge may fuel South Dakota's power grid

Data centers have grown so massive that their electricity consumption now matches that of entire U.S. states. Consider Meta's Hyperion AI data center: once finished, it will consume as much power as South Dakota.

Meta recently announced funding for seven additional natural gas power plants, beyond the three already planned, to support its $27 billion data center. Together, these ten plants in Louisiana will produce about 7.5 gigawatts of electricity — slightly more than the entire capacity of South Dakota.

Like many tech firms, Meta has long promoted its climate and environmental credentials. It routinely publishes sustainability reports and often boasts about its renewable energy purchases. It even effectively secured a nuclear power plant for two decades.

Meta's Hyperion data center in Louisiana will put the company's commitments to the test.

Natural gas has often been described as a "bridge fuel" — build a few gas plants now while renewables, batteries, and nuclear become more viable. That's likely how Meta is justifying this decision internally.

But the bridge fuel argument has been around for decades, and it's starting to feel stale. The cost of renewables and batteries has dropped sharply, while gas turbine prices have soared. Meta has been a major buyer of solar, batteries, and nuclear in recent years, making its heavy bet on natural gas all the more puzzling.

TechCrunch contacted Meta for comment, but the company did not respond to multiple inquiries.

According to TechCrunch's calculations based on Department of Energy data, the massive turbines in Louisiana will release 12.4 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. That's 50% more than Meta's total carbon footprint in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available.

That figure actually underestimates the climate impact, as it does not account for leaks in the natural gas supply chain.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, traps heat 84 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. Even a leakage rate of 0.2% along the supply chain can make natural gas worse for the climate than coal. In the U.S., methane leakage from natural gas production and pipelines is closer to 3%. That's far from clean energy.

Meta's most recent sustainability report does not mention methane leaks. In fact, it says nothing about methane or natural gas at all. Yet this fuel is set to become one of the biggest contributors to Meta's carbon footprint in the years ahead.

The company might still honor its climate pledge by offsetting these emissions with carbon removal credits. But it will now need far more credits, plus a transparent accounting of exactly how much methane will leak into the atmosphere to fuel its new power plants.