Over the next year, renewable configurations could change to meet the demand for clean power. At the utility-scale level, modularity and ease of permitting are expected to drive contracted solar capacity, which outpaced wind in 2024, to grow to twice the contracted wind capacity in 2025.34 Deals may scale, as reflected in the numerous largest-ever renewable power purchase agreements signed with technology companies this year for data centers globally.35 Value in scaling can also be captured at the distributed level, where there is interest in harnessing existing solar and battery storage resources and developing new ones to help meet data center needs.36
Given grid constraints, some companies and utilities are looking to onsite solutions that can help meet demand in a matter of months while awaiting a grid connection.37 In 2024, data center-as-a-service companies and utilities announced off-grid solutions such as fuel cells. Even in cases where natural gas powers them in the short term, fuel cells can bridge to a renewable natural gas or green hydrogen solution.38 New storage solutions geared toward data centers include geopressured geothermal systems and sodium-ion and thermal batteries that can lower operators’ insurance rates by offering nonflammable alternatives to lithium batteries.39
Expanding renewable capabilities with AI
AI is helping deploy and integrate the renewables that the industry is seeking to power its infrastructure buildout. Domestically manufactured smart meters incorporating AI may soon help increase grid stability as customer solar and storage systems are integrated.40 Similarly, an energy provider and tech company are deploying AI to help build a 1 GW virtual power plant of smart home thermostats and distributed energy resources, in addition to renewable generation and price modeling, and weather forecasting.41 AI-powered robots are helping install large solar deployments in the desert powering data centers.42 On the regulatory side, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory hosts a PolicyAI project that has released a searchable database of federal environmental impact studies and public comment sorting to enable AI solutions expediting environmental and permitting reviews.43 Finally, US Department of Energy (DOE) has funded research using AI to accelerate the development of new circuit technologies for high-voltage direct current converters to help more efficiently integrate remote renewable generation.44
As utilities and tech companies deploy renewables in 2025, the following developments are expected:
- Repurposing brownfield sites:Limited grid capacity and transmission challenges can create opportunities for brownfield sites to be repurposed as clean-energy data center campuses. Projects could leverage existing power lines, water access, and a local workforce. DOE awarded a GRIP grant to build a grid-enhancing renewable microgrid on a brownfield textile site previously powered with coal to power a data center and manufacturing complex.45
- Resource planning renewables:Utility uptake of IRA provisions in resource planning is often uneven, although solar and wind are the lowest-cost resources when incentives are factored in.46 Deloitte’s 2024 power and utilities survey shows 97% of utilities prioritize clean energy to support data center growth, suggesting that tech companies with decarbonization targets could drive utilities to consider more renewable deployment as part of data center siting decisions.
- Shifting focus to real-world impact of renewable strategies:Some tech companies are seeking to reduce emissions by shifting from unbundled to bundled renewable energy credit purchases and other actions to drive new supply of renewables.
