Oracle’s proposed investment in 2 gigawatts of renewable energy projects for New Mexico comes as local opposition could delay development of the Project Jupiter data center that Oracle is building for OpenAI.
The two tech companies are developing the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, as part of the broader Stargate AI infrastructure project announced by President Donald Trump in 2025. But Project Jupiter faces local protests and court battles over concerns about its environmental impacts—and the latest Oracle announcement on September 8 seeking proposals for renewable energy projects does not change the fact that the data center will be powered by fuel cells that consume natural gas.
“Like all matching programs, this would be synthetic in the sense that 2 GW of renewables wouldn’t directly power the data center,” wrote Michael Thomas, CEO of the Cleanview data platform that tracks renewable energy and data center projects, in a LinkedIn post.
Oracle and OpenAI had originally planned to build 2.2 gigawatts of natural gas generation that could have resulted in 14 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, Thomas pointed out. That would have effectively “wiped out 20 years of carbon emissions reductions in the state of New Mexico,” he wrote in his post.
State residents and environmental groups have rallied in opposition to Project Jupiter with protests and lawsuits. New Mexico’s Land Office twice blocked requests to run a natural gas pipeline to the data center in New Mexico’s Doña Ana County.
Such opposition likely prompted the tech companies’ Project Jupiter plan to pivot from gas turbines to fuel-cell technology, which produces electricity through an electrochemical process without combustion.
The natural gas sticking point
Compared to the original plan for gas turbines, the deployment of 2.45 gigawatts of fuel cells could reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by more than 90 percent and “substantially” reduce the amount of other air pollutants, like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide, according to Julia Robin, VP of networking and data capacity management at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, in a commentary published in the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The Bloom Energy fuel cell technology also has the flexibility to operate on cleaner fuels like hydrogen or biogas, along with being more compatible with carbon-capture systems. Robin suggested that this technology could “give Project Jupiter a more flexible path as lower-carbon fuels and carbon-capture infrastructure develop.”
Oracle’s renewables announcement was also accompanied by a $1 million pledge to fund research on carbon capture and sequestration, with a focus on storing and potentially harnessing the carbon dioxide produced by the Bloom Energy fuel cells.
But for now, fuel cells powering Project Jupiter will still use natural gas because it is “available and reliable, especially in this region of the country,” Robin wrote.
The Project Jupiter switch from gas turbines to fuel cells would significantly reduce local air pollution and emissions. Yet the continued reliance on natural gas means that “even with the new plan, the data center could be the largest source of emissions in the state,” Thomas at Cleanview pointed out.
Oracle’s new effort to invest in 2 gigawatts of new renewable energy projects could benefit New Mexico. But the Project Jupiter commitment to achieving “100 percent carbon-free energy matching by 2031” does not directly mitigate the data center’s emissions from the fuel cells using natural gas.
“The Bloom fuel cells would be the primary power source, and Oracle would claim the environmental attributes of the new renewable projects located somewhere else in the state,” Thomas wrote.
Pressing forward with PR
Project Jupiter continues to face potential delays in development. On August 23, the New Mexico Supreme Court paused the air quality permitting process for the data center while overseeing two separate legal challenges from environmental groups.
But Oracle is still trying to win over the opposition in New Mexico. Its flurry of Project Jupiter announcements on September 8 included the promise to set up a public dashboard for community members to view data related to the data center’s air, noise, heat, light, and water. The company also promised to “commission independent third-party assessments of this information and make reports available to the public.”
Work on the data center project has continued despite the state Supreme Court order and has reached 26 percent completion, an Oracle executive told Doña Ana County commissioners in a meeting reported by Searchlight New Mexico on September 8.
It’s just the latest example of many data centers facing potential delays and legal challenges amid growing bipartisan opposition across the United States. But Oracle is under special pressure to get its AI data centers up and running because the company has taken on $125 billion in debt to finance its data center building spree—the result of Oracle having less cash on hand than its Big Tech competitors.
During a quarterly earnings briefing with analysts and reporters on September 10, Hilary Maxon, chief financial officer at Oracle, denied that Project Jupiter is facing any delays in its construction schedule in New Mexico. “We’re making very good progress,” Maxon said. “In terms of construction, [the] data center is definitely on track.”
