Share the full article
Intersect Power has raised $800 million in a new round of funding, led by TPG Rise Climate, as part of a broader partnership that also includes Google to build clean power alongside new data centers to meet the surging demand for artificial intelligence. The San Francisco-based company develops, owns and operates industrial-scale clean power projects.
With financial backing from TPG and Google, Intersect will develop renewable energy and storage industrial parks that will be co-located with Google’s planned US data centers. Google will be the anchor tenant of the energy parks, which will power its new data centers once they come online. The first such project is expected to break ground in 2026 and reach completion the following year.
“This partnership is an evolution of the way hyperscalers and power providers have previously worked together,” said Intersect’s Sheldon Kimber. “Deep collaborative partnerships combined with creative problem-solving are the only way we can meet the explosion of AI growth, as well as society’s accelerating electricity demand.”
Greening data centers
Energy-gobbling data centers to power AI and cloud computing are projected to drive up demand for electricity in coming years. Grid infrastructure upgrades to meet that demand is lagging. Google, Microsoft and other “hyperscalers” – as well as private equity investors – are investing heavily in developing green power supply, even as their carbon footprints rise (see, “AI data centers tackle the sustainable energy challenge”).
“Google is focused on evolving digital infrastructure development by co-locating grid-connected carbon-free energy and data center investments into closely-linked infrastructure projects,” writes Ruth Porat, who took over from Sundar Pichai last year as Google’s president and CEO.
Low-carbon infrastructure
Other investors in Intersect’s latest round include private equity backers Greenbelt Capital Partners and Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, which first invested in the firm in 2020. CAI has been partnering with the company even longer. Intersect has “executed on their blueprint, project by project and partnership by partnership,” saidBill Green of CAI, which re-upped via its inaugural Climate Adaptive Infrastructure Fund.
Intersect’s partnership with TPG and Google, he says “will accelerate their measurable impact and provide pathbreaking new approaches to the challenge of deep decarbonization of digital infrastructure.”
Intersect has a combined 2.2 gigawatts of solar and 2.4 gigawatt hours of battery storage under operation or construction, and plans to break ground on additional 4GW of solar and 10GW/h of battery storage next year.
