Google Plans $600M Expansion for Iowa Data Hub

Google has received a new incentive from Iowa to undertake a $600M expansion of its massive data center hub in Council Bluffs, which already is a $5B facility.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority approved a $16.6M property tax break—spread over 20 years—for the expansion. Google’s parent, Alphabet, agreed to increase the workforce at the data farm from adding 31 new employees to the 250-person workforce.

Google expects to begin construction on the expansion this year, with the project completed by the end of 2024.

Google arrived in Iowa in 2007, promising that the Council Bluffs data center complex would “help create the Silicon Valley of the Midwest in Iowa. The tech giant has undertaken two expansions in Council Bluffs, announcing earlier this year that its investment in the area had reached $5B.

Wind power—and an established hub for manufacturing the giant wind turbines used to generate electricity at wind farms—are the primary drivers of the growth of the data center industry in the Hawkeye state.

Large amounts of electricity are needed to power data processing facilities. As the industry has been pushed to develop sustainable data centers, several major players have embraced renewable energy as the primary power source for hyperscale data centers.

Iowa leads the nation in the amount of electricity it generates from wind power, with nearly 57% of Iowa’s power coming from wind.

Microsoft operates a data center cluster near Des Moines which currently is undergoing a $1B expansion. Meta’s data center hub in Altoona is expanding beyond 5MSF, which will make it the largest data center campus in the world when the project is complete in 2025. Meta’s $2.5B data center is rising in an H configuration on the site at 801 Grand in Downtown Des Moines.

Seimens Gamesa has turbine manufacturing facilities in Fort Madison, Iowa and Hutchison, Kansas.

Sustainability continues to drive new development efforts in the data center sector. Equinix, one of the two largest pure-play data center REITs, is spearheading an effort to develop low-carbon fuel cells to power data centers. A consortium of seven companies—including Equinix, InfraPrime, RISE, Snam, SOLIDpower, TEC4FUELS and Vertiv—have been chosen by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership to create a new power source for data centers using low-carbon, solid-oxide fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries.

The consortium’s pilot project will pave the way for the use of hydrogen fuel cells for primary and backup power at data centers, the Clean Hydrogen Partnership said at the project announcement in December.

Equinix, which says it has a “future-first” sustainability strategy, has pledged to become climate neutral by 2030 and achieve 100 percent renewable energy across its global footprint.