Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it has an agreement to buy power from the Clinton nuclear power plant in central Illinois for 20 years to run data operations and support its development of artificial intelligence.
The agreement is unusual for Illinois but resembles transactions around the country as Meta and other big tech companies race to become leaders in AI technology powered by data centers that require enormous amounts of energy.
The Clinton site has one nuclear reactor and is the smallest of the six nuclear plants across the state, all owned by Constellation Energy. In 2016, state lawmakers agreed to subsidize the Clinton plant through charges on electric customers’ bills after then-owner Exelon threatened to shut it down.
The companies said the agreement could potentially lead to increasing power output from the site.
“This agreement ensures a critical plant will stay online and meet growing energy needs,” Meta said in a statement, “and allows Constellation to explore further nuclear development at the site.”
The announcement follows other big technology power agreements over the last year, including Microsoft’s purchase of energy from Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant, which is also owned by Constellation. Last fall, Constellation announced it was reopening the plant, which shut down in 2019.
The 1979 partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island was the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history. While that reactor was retired, another reactor provided power until 2019.
Meta “figured out that supporting the relicensing and expansion of existing plants is just as impactful as finding new sources of energy,” said Joe Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation.
Meta’s purchase of power from Constellation begins in 2027 and will be used for California-based Meta’s operations, the company said.
In Illinois, Meta operates a data center in DeKalb and hasn’t announced any additional plans to expand.
Next month, ComEd customers are going to see a spike in their electric bills because of growing power demand across the country.
State lawmakers just adjourned after failing to pass legislation to address increasing power demand in Illinois as data centers rapidly expand and require large amounts of electricity. The measure aimed to add solar and wind power as well as develop large batteries to store energy.
That bill also proposed ending a longtime ban on building new nuclear power plants to help the state meet future energy needs.
Business groups effectively killed the bill, saying they had concerns about the costs. Lawmakers hope to revive the effort in a short legislative session in the fall.
Three years ago, Exelon, which owns electric utility ComEd, spun off its nuclear plants across the country to form Constellation.
Contributing: George Wiebe, Abby Miller