Google Signs First Corporate Offtake for Gas Power with Carbon Capture

Google, infrastructure investor I Squared Capital, and portfolio company Low Carbon Infrastructure announced a partnership to develop Broadwing Energy, a natural gas power plant with over 400 MW of generating capacity integrated with carbon capture and sequestration technology in Decatur, Illinois. Google will purchase most of the plant's output, marking the first corporate offtake agreement for a CCS-enabled power plant globally.

Broadwing Energy will be developed on an existing Archer Daniels Midland site in Decatur, Illinois, capturing approximately 90% of its CO2 emissions, which will be permanently stored in ADM's adjacent EPA-approved Class VI sequestration facilities more than a mile underground. The plant is anticipated to achieve commercial operation in 2030. Google has signed over 170 agreements to purchase more than 22 GW of clean energy since 2010, progressively expanding beyond renewables into geothermal, advanced nuclear, energy storage, biomass, and now CCS-enabled gas. Despite growing energy demand from AI, Google reported a 12% reduction in data center carbon emissions in 2024.

The CCS-enabled gas plant addresses the most difficult aspect of Google's energy challenge: providing dispatchable 24/7 clean power that renewables alone cannot reliably supply. By capturing 90% of CO2 from natural gas combustion and permanently storing it underground, the project enables the use of an abundant, reliable fuel while substantially reducing its climate impact. The offtake agreement provides LCI and I Squared with the revenue certainty needed to finance and develop the project, demonstrating the role that large corporate clean energy buyers can play in commercializing nascent carbon removal and clean power technologies.

Google described the Broadwing project as the first in a longer-term collaboration with I Squared and LCI to develop future CCS facilities for power generation at commercial scale in the US. The technology's broader potential for global deployment, including in countries with large natural gas reserves and geological CO2 storage capacity, makes it strategically relevant to long-term clean energy planning in markets including India, where both natural gas infrastructure and geological storage potential exist. The project is expected to generate insights on CCS integration, capture rates, and economics that will inform future commercial-scale applications.

Key figure — 400+ MW generating capacity; 90% CO2 capture rate at Broadwing