Google signs deal for 2.5GW Arkansas solar-storage project
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- Google will serve as anchor investor and offtaker for the Steel River Energy Center, a 2.5 GW solar / 2.9 GWh storage project in Mississippi County, Arkansas that broke ground Tuesday.
- Cypress Creek Energy will build Steel River in three phases, with the first two bringing 1.6 GW of solar and 1.9 GWh of battery storage online; the facility is expected to be fully operational in 2029.
- Solar panels for the project will be made entirely in the U.S. and "nearly all" structural steel will come from Mississippi County facilities, according to Cypress Creek CEO Kevin Smith.
- Mississippi County is projected to receive 700 construction jobs per phase and an estimated $300 million in local tax revenue over the project's life, with Google adding $5 million and Cypress Creek $3 million for local energy affordability and community investments.
- Google's latest sustainability report found its 2025 carbon footprint is 18% higher than 2024 and 81% above its 2019 baseline — driven by AI buildout — making large-scale clean-energy offtakes a critical piece of its net-zero math.
- Solar and battery storage accounted for 91% of all new U.S. electricity generation capacity in Q1 2025, per the Solar Energy Industries Association, underscoring why Google called the project "a game changer."
Why it matters: Google's emissions have surged 81% above its 2019 baseline largely because of AI data-center buildout, so a 2.5 GW solar-plus-storage offtake — its largest ever — is a load-bearing piece of its decarbonization roadmap, not just a sustainability headline. With the project fully online in 2029 and U.S.-made panels throughout, the deal also represents a concrete bet on a domestic solar supply chain at a moment when solar-plus-storage accounts for 91% of new U.S. generation capacity.
