Meta has abandoned its global commitment to rely solely on renewable electricity and withdrawn from the Climate Group’s RE100 initiative, a pledge it had upheld since 2016. The Climate Group said Meta could no longer meet the technical criteria for membership after the tech giant financed new natural gas power plants to supply its AI data centres.
Meta signed deals with suppliers to build new gas facilities, including 10 plants totalling 7.5 gigawatts of capacity — roughly the energy demand of South Dakota — largely to power its Hyperion data centre in Louisiana. The company claims on its website to have matched 100 percent of its electricity use with clean and renewable sources since 2020 through long-term power purchase agreements.
Meta is not alone in turning to fossil fuels to meet surging data centre demand. Microsoft signed a deal with Chevron in June 2026 for natural gas-powered electricity for a Texas facility, while Alphabet has struck a similar partnership. The International Energy Agency has forecast global electricity demand to rise 3.6 percent in 2026 and a further 3.8 percent in 2027.