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Clearway says it is backing off its plans to build a data center and gas power plant on federal land, days after Heatmap revealed the energy developer’s proposal.
Last week, I reported that Clearway asked the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management to swap a five year-old application for a solar farm’s permits with “a proposed data center and natural gas facility.” Clearway’s chief development officer John Woody had written in a letter to BLM dated April 3 that the swap was “the result of a shift in our internal development priorities” and intended “to better align with the goals of our Administration.” He also noted the plans were in “exploratory early stages.”
This news fit a trend. I obtained Clearway’s letter right after reporting on a different solar project on federal land that was being swapped for a data center. But it turns out, the company’s internal thinking continued to shift: on Friday, they reached out to me saying they are now nixing the data center and gas plant, after concluding it wasn’t the right call for their business.
“Since our initial filing, we’ve evaluated how to make the best use of this public land in a way that serves its intended purpose: the public interest. As a clean energy developer and operator, our focus in Nevada remains solar and battery storage,” Clearway said in a statement it provided to me from an unnamed spokesperson. “We are in the process of amending our application to reflect the state’s growing demand for low-cost, reliable energy.”
When I first broke news of Clearway’s plans, I said it was an apparent aberration – they oversaw relatively few fossil projects and had never worked in data centers. I chalked this pivot up to yet another energy developer changing its tune with the winds of national politics. Now that the company is apparently sticking to its guns, I’m mostly just left wondering what happened here – and relieved some still remain committed to zero-emissions power in the booming business of electrons.
