In Taiwan, the Work Begins With Access to Land
Google’s first geothermal procurement agreements in Asia call for an initial 10 MW of new generation on Taiwan’s grid to support local data centers and offices. When Google and developer Baseload Capital announced the agreements in April 2025, a Google energy executive told Taiwan Public Television Service that the companies expected operations to begin in 2029. The original timetable allowed roughly four years between signing a customer and delivering electricity.
Baseload’s development work in Hualien County illustrates one reason such projects take time. In November 2025, the company reported that members of the Hongye Tribe had voted to approve a public-land lease for geothermal exploration. Baseload opened a local office, reached an agreement with the community, and secured an exploration permit for a two-year program of drilling in stages. The company has described Hongye separately from Google’s contracted supply. What the Hualien project documents is an early milestone rarely visible in a power purchase announcement: the developer secured community consent before drilling could establish what the field might produce.
Kenya Has the Generating Field. The Campus Remains Unresolved.
In Kenya’s Rift Valley, the appeal of Olkaria was evident when Microsoft and G42 announced their digital investment initiative in 2024. Kenya already had a fleet of geothermal generating stations at Olkaria. G42 and local partners proposed building a campus there, powered by geothermal electricity and hosting Microsoft Azure services for a new East Africa cloud region.
Two difficulties emerged. In May 2026, Semafor reported that President William Ruto had cited insufficient available power as an obstacle to the project. Separately, Reuters, citing Bloomberg, reported disagreements over payment guarantees. Microsoft and G42 had sought a commitment from the Kenyan government to buy a certain amount of computing capacity annually. Kenya’s principal secretary for information said discussions remained active at the time. The project was reported delayed, with its scale and terms still under discussion.
Olkaria exposes two decisions that often get folded into the phrase geothermal-powered campus. The electricity supplier needs to establish how much power it can reserve after serving existing customers. The campus developer needs customers prepared to buy enough computing capacity to support the investment. In Beaver County, Google has settled the first question for 396 MW even if its campus plans change. In Kenya, the terms on both sides of the meter became subjects of negotiation.
New Zealand and Iceland Offer a View From Operations
Near Taupō on New Zealand’s North Island, the distinction between what a plant produces and what a technology company purchases is written into the contract. Contact Energy’s 51.4 MW Te Huka Unit 3 began supplying the national grid in December 2024. Under a ten-year agreement with Contact, Microsoft purchases all the renewable energy attributes associated with the plant’s output. Electricity flows into the national system. Microsoft gains the contractual right to claim the renewable generation without having to put its data halls beside the wells.
Iceland offers the view from the customer’s rack. At its campus on a former NATO base near Keflavík, Verne identifies geothermal and hydroelectric generation as its power sources. Its campus specifications also list two 33 kV transmission feeds, diverse power routes, and 2N generator redundancy. For a customer choosing where to install a high-performance computing cluster, those details belong together. The generation mix describes the electricity available to the campus. The feeds and backup generators describe how Verne keeps equipment energized when a supply route or a piece of electrical infrastructure goes out of service.
Even in an established renewable market, operators negotiate additional supply campus by campus. In June, Icelandic generator Landsvirkjun and Borealis Data Center announced a 12 MW power purchase agreement supporting expansion at Blönduós. Landsvirkjun operates hydroelectric, geothermal, and wind facilities. The agreement gives Borealis a specific quantity of additional power on that system, a more useful figure for an expansion schedule than the country’s overall renewable share.
Taking Geothermal to the Load
The larger opportunity for data center developers is to widen the map beyond places with established geothermal fields. Conventional plants depend on finding accessible heat, fluid, and a pathway through the rock. Enhanced geothermal developers use drilling and reservoir engineering to circulate fluid through hot rock. For an operator with land, fiber, and customers already lined up, the attraction is the prospect of developing generation closer to the proposed load. As Sage Geosystems CEO Cindy Taff remarked in a DCF Show conversation about geothermal and time to power, “Now the primary challenge is just enough energy.”
Meta is pursuing two approaches. Its partnership with Sage targets up to 150 MW using a geopressured geothermal system, with an initial phase originally aimed at 2027. Separately, XGS Energy’s planned 150 MW project in New Mexico would use closed-loop technology to supply the Public Service Company of New Mexico grid in support of Meta’s operations. In March, XGS placed an initial order for Baker Hughes engineering services. The milestones to watch are wells completed, net electricity available after the plant powers its own equipment, and the first deliveries accepted by the grid.
A dozen years ago, the solar field serving QTS Princeton gave visitors something they could see and measure: 57,000 panels and 14.1 MW of generating capacity. At Cape Station, the equivalent field report is the status of three adjoining units. One sells electricity. The second is sending test power to the grid. Crews are commissioning the third. Google’s eight units follow those. For a data center operator deciding when to order servers or promise capacity to a customer, that sequence is the part of the gigawatt story that sets the calendar.
