Intersect Power on Dec.10 announced a strategic partnership with Google and TPG Rise Climate to provide scaled renewable power and storage solutions to new data centers.
The partnership is designed to deliver gigawatts of new data center capacity across the U.S. with Intersect Power catalyzing a targeted $20 billion in renewable power infrastructure investment by the end of the decade, it said.
Intersect Power has already begun financing the partnership’s first co-located clean energy project, which is expected to be operational in 2026 and fully complete by 2027.
“This innovative ‘power-first’ approach to data center development represents an evolved model for significantly increasing speed of infrastructure deployment, easing grid burden, and improving overall reliability and affordability for energy customers,” it said.
By co-locating data center load with large amounts of high capacity factor, low-cost, clean electricity, and added battery storage, data centers can achieve high percentages of renewable energy while reducing the transmission required to connect generation to load over longer distances, Intersect Power said.
“To realize AI’s potential, the growth in electricity demand must be met with new, clean power sources. The scale of AI presents an opportunity to completely rethink data center development — by co-locating them where possible with the grid-connected carbon-free energy that keeps them up and running,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Global Head of Data Center Energy at Google. “We’re bringing this opportunity to life by combining pioneers at the intersection of data centers and clean energy development to synchronize load growth with new power generation in a novel way. We hope to replicate this model in multiple markets across the U.S. and around the world.”
Under the terms of the partnership, Intersect Power will build new clean energy assets, with Google providing offtake via newly constructed data center campuses as an anchor tenant in co-located industrial parks. Once built, the Google data center would come online alongside its own clean power, bringing new generation capacity to the grid to meet its own load.
Intersect Power also announced a more than $800 million funding round led by TPG Rise Climate and Google, with participation from Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as financial advisor on the transaction.
"In close coordination with grid planners, operators, and communities, the companies will continue to develop local clean energy resources that support rural economic development for both landowners and the local community through job creation, increased tax revenue, and support of local non-profit organizations," a news release noted.
Intersect Power has a base portfolio of 2.2 GW of operating solar PV and 2.4 GWh of battery storage in operation or construction, representing ~$4B in capital investments. It will break ground on an additional 4 GW of solar PV and 10 GWh of battery storage representing ~$9B of assets in 2025.
TPG Rise Climate pursues climate-related investments. The fund takes a broad-based sector approach to investment types, from growth equity to buyouts, and focuses on climate solutions in the following thematic areas: clean electrons, clean molecules and materials, and negative emissions.
