Our latest bet on a fusion-powered future
Imagine a world powered by the same energy that fuels the sun and the stars. Today we’re taking our biggest step so far to make this a reality through an investment and offtake agreement with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS).
Through our new partnership with CFS — the largest direct corporate purchase agreement for fusion energy — we will offtake 200 megawatts (MW) of carbon free energy from their first commercial plant, to be developed in Chesterfield, Virginia. We're also making our second capital investment in CFS to help them build on promising scientific and engineering breakthroughs and continue moving their technology toward commercialization.
Fusion holds huge potential as an energy source of the future: it’s clean, abundant and inherently safe, and it can be built just about anywhere. Commercializing fusion is immensely challenging, and success is not guaranteed. But if it works, it could change the world by providing a more secure and clean energy future.
What is fusion energy and how is CFS approaching it?
At its core, fusion is the same process that powers the sun and stars. It involves taking light atomic nuclei and heating them to extreme temperatures — over 100 million degrees Celsius. At these temperatures, the fuel becomes a plasma, and when dense enough, the nuclei fuse, releasing a tremendous amount of energy that can be captured to generate carbon-free electricity. 1
In order for fusion to succeed, we must first prove out which technological pathways can produce more energy than they consume (also known as "net energy positive" or "Q>1”). No private company has reached this ambitious milestone, but we’re hopeful that recent breakthroughs have moved CFS closer.
CFS seeks to use powerful high-temperature superconductor magnets arranged like a donut — called a tokamak — to confine and control the plasma, creating the conditions necessary for fusion to occur. We’re excited about CFS’s technology because their magnet breakthroughs enable a more compact and commercially viable tokamak design. This is the core innovation in their SPARC demonstration machine, currently being assembled in Massachusetts.
Building on our initial R&D investment in CFS in 2021 for SPARC’s development, our new investment will support efforts to put their first commercial plant, ARC, on the grid. We hope our offtake agreement for CFS’s ARC will add momentum to these efforts, and as part of our agreement we have the option to purchase power from future plants. Scaling any type of new technology requires taking some bold steps, and first-of-a-kind power plants are no different. That’s why Google and CFS are eager to use ARC to catalyze the commercial fusion market.
Opening more pathways to new power sources
Today's announcement builds on a long history of clean energy leadership. Since 2010 we've procured over 22 GW of clean energy which has helped these technologies mature and enabled us to successfully reduce our data center energy emissions by 12%. As global energy demand grows, companies like Google can play an important role supporting technologies that have a path to provide clean firm capacity within the next decade. This includes our landmark agreements for advanced nuclear and next-generation geothermal as well as our ability to identify and back promising earlier-stage technologies. We are adding Fusion to our portfolio because of its potential to be transformative in delivering abundant, sustainable energy for the planet. Our new partnership with CFS marks an exciting step forward on this journey.
