In February 2026, Google and geothermal developer Ormat Technologies signed a power purchase agreement for up to 150 MW of new capacity, routed through Nevada utility NV Energy’s Clean Transition Tariff to feed Google’s data centers in the state. The new plants will be developed as a portfolio, coming online in phases between 2028 and 2030. It is the first deal under the tariff since Nevada regulators approved the model in mid-2025, and one of the largest geothermal procurements yet struck in the name of AI electricity demand.
The backstory is blunt: AI training and inference are pushing data center load to levels that wind and solar cannot cover around the clock. Geothermal is one of the few clean sources that can serve as baseload — no waiting for wind or sun, the plants just run. When every kilowatt of compute is valuable enough, buying firm clean power stops being a PR decision and becomes an engineering one.
A 150MW Portfolio PPA
Three structural points define the deal:
- Capacity: up to 150 MW, built as a series of new geothermal projects across Nevada rather than a single plant
- Path: Ormat does not sell directly to Google; it delivers to NV Energy, which earmarks the output for Google’s data centers
- Term: the contract starts at the first project’s commercial operation and runs 15 years past the final project’s; Nevada PUC approval is expected in the second half of 2026
Briana Kobor, Google’s Head of Energy Market Innovation, framed it as “a proven, scalable model for large customers to partner with utilities and technology providers.” Ormat CEO Doron Blachar was more direct: “AI is fundamentally increasing electricity demand across the technology sector,” and geothermal “is uniquely positioned to deliver the reliable, carbon-free power required to support that growth.”
How the Clean Transition Tariff Works
The CTT is a rate structure Google and NV Energy (a Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary) proposed together in 2024 to break a regulatory deadlock: early-stage technologies — geothermal, advanced nuclear, long-duration storage — struggle to recover costs under standard tariffs, and ordinary ratepayers should not carry their development risk. The CTT lets large customers pay a premium themselves and bind the new capacity to their own load, keeping both the risk and the upside with the volunteers.
This deal is the framework’s first transaction since Nevada regulators signed off in summer 2025. When the model was originally pitched, the counterpart was enhanced-geothermal startup Fervo (which has since filed to go public); now the incumbent conventional leader Ormat is carrying the ball — evidence the framework can accommodate different technology routes.
Why Geothermal, Why Now
Google’s long-term target is 24/7 carbon-free energy: every kilowatt-hour, every hour, matched with clean generation. Wind and solar cannot do that alone, which is where clean firm power comes in. Geothermal runs continuously, has a small land footprint, and Nevada happens to sit on some of the best geothermal resource in the United States. For a data center, 150 MW of steady clean power is not just an ESG line item — it locks supply certainty into the cost structure years ahead.
There is a technical subplot, too. The announcement does not specify whether the new projects use conventional or next-generation methods. Ormat licensed Sage Geosystems’ next-gen geothermal technology in August 2025, and Sage is building its first commercial plant at an existing Ormat site — this deal could become the vehicle that scales that technology.
Ormat’s Pivot to Data Center Loads
For Ormat, this is a visible strategic turn. In January 2026 it signed what was effectively its first PPA with a large-load customer: a 20-year contract with data center operator Switch for roughly 13 MW from the existing Salt Wells plant in western Nevada, plus an option to add about 7 MW of solar for auxiliary power. The Google agreement is more than ten times larger, and it comes from entirely new development. In the same week, Meta and NVIDIA announced their million-GPU compute pact (see our AI weekly roundup) — the electricity bill of the compute race is rewriting the power industry’s customer base.
What It Means for Developers and Product Teams
Three observations. First, compute cost is becoming an energy cost: part of inference pricing increasingly behaves like power procurement, and siting plus tariff structure will show up directly in cloud and API prices. Second, access to clean firm power is turning into a data center differentiator — materially relevant for agent workloads with high availability requirements. Third, the CTT model of large customers paying a premium to derisk early technology has now been proven replicable; for energy-tech startups, that is a clear exit path: sell first to the biggest power buyers on the grid.
Sources
- Google, Ormat sign deal to power data centers from new geothermal projects — ESG Today
- Ormat deepens its data center power play with Google deal — Latitude Media
- Google signs 150MW geothermal PPA with Ormat in Nevada — Data Center Dynamics
AI-assisted summary compiled from the sources above, reviewed by a human before publishing.