Google’s $2 billion Alabama data centre expansion signals shift towards nuclear power and AI infrastructure growth

Google invests over $2 billion in its Alabama data centre, highlighting the growing reliance on nuclear and renewable energy sources to meet rising AI and cloud infrastructure demands in the US South.

Google has invested more than $2 billion in its data centre campus in Jackson County, Alabama, according to the company, expanding a site that began with a roughly $600 million build-out in 2018 on land once occupied by a decommissioned TVA coal plant. The latest investment underscores how the rush to build artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure is reshaping power demand and local economies across the American South.

When Google first announced the project, it said the facility would make use of existing transmission lines from the former Widows Creek Fossil Plant site. Industry reporting at the time described the development as one of the company’s earliest large-scale data centre projects in the region and a potential draw for further technology investment, while local officials hoped it would create jobs and spur wider economic activity.

Google says the Jackson County site is now powered by carbon-free electricity from a solar farm and supports local communities in other ways, including providing Wi-Fi on buses and helping attract high-tech businesses to the area. The company says it has trained more than 153,000 Alabamians through its Grow with Google programme and contributed more than $28 million in philanthropic giving to local organisations and non-profits.

The energy backdrop is changing quickly. In August 2025, TVA said it would buy power from Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 advanced nuclear plant to help supply Google facilities in Alabama and Tennessee, a sign of how hyperscalers are increasingly leaning on nuclear and other firm power sources to meet rising demand. Google’s move sits alongside similar efforts by Microsoft and Amazon, while other states are already facing public pushback over the grid costs of AI-linked data centres and the strain such projects can place on ratepayers.

Source Reference Map

Inspired by headline at: ^[1]

Sources by paragraph:

Source: Fuse Wire Services