Electricity Demand at a Different Scale
March 2026, in southeast Nebraska, landowners are being approached to sell farmland for a project that would introduce one of the largest electricity loads in the state’s history. Reporting from Grist (https://grist.org/accountability/google-data-center-carbon-capture-nebraska/) and Flatwater Free Press (https://flatwaterfreepress.org/google-proposes-nebraska-data-center-requiring-more-power-than-all-of-lincoln/) describes a proposed Google data center that could require between 1,000 and 3,000 megawatts of power.
At the upper end, that exceeds the output of the largest existing power plant in Nebraska and is several times larger than the peak demand of Lincoln’s municipal utility.
This scale matters because it shifts data centers from being incremental additions to electricity demand into a category closer to heavy industry. A single facility of this size changes how generation is financed, how transmission is planned, and how emissions are accounted for at the state level.
Bill LB1261 and Nebraska’s Power System
Nebraska operates under a public power model, where utilities are owned by public entities rather than private companies. Under existing law, private developers can build renewable generation and connect to the grid, but fossil-fuel plants built for private use cannot.
The state bill “LB1261” introduces a targeted exception. It would allow private developers to build large power plants—defined at 1,000 megawatts or more—for a single industrial customer and connect those plants to the public grid.
The structure of the bill is specific:
- The plant must be located adjacent to the industrial user
- The developer pays all interconnection costs
- Approval is required from the state’s Power Review Board
- Excess electricity can be sold back to the public system
Supporters argue this allows Nebraska to attract large investments without shifting costs onto ratepayers. Critics, including the Nebraska Farmers Union, argue that it shifts control over generation decisions away from publicly accountable institutions and toward large private users, while potentially increasing natural gas demand and costs.
Why the Eminent Domain Clause Matters
The formal title of LB1261 is the following:
LB1261 – Prohibit the use of eminent domain to acquire certain privately owned electric generation facilities
This refers to prohibiting the use of eminent domain to acquire certain privately owned electric generation facilities. This detail is central to understanding how the bill enables projects like the proposed data center.
Nebraska’s public power districts have authority over energy infrastructure within their service areas, including the ability to use eminent domain under certain conditions. For a private developer, this creates a structural risk. A large, privately built power plant connected to the grid could, in principle, be subject to takeover by a public entity.
That risk affects financing. Building a multi-gigawatt power plant requires billions of dollars in capital, and investors need assurance that the asset will remain under private control. By removing the possibility of eminent domain in these cases, LB1261 provides that assurance and makes private development feasible.
This change also shifts the balance of control. Decisions about new generation capacity move away from publicly accountable boards and toward private companies and large industrial users.
Why Natural Gas Is Being Considered
The proposed data center requires continuous, high-density electricity supply. That requirement narrows the set of viable energy sources.
Natural gas is being considered because it provides:
- Dispatchable power available on demand
- Construction timelines measured in a few years
- Existing fuel supply infrastructure
Other options exist but face constraints at this scale. Wind and solar generation depend on weather conditions. Battery storage becomes expensive at durations needed for multi-gigawatt continuous loads. Nuclear energy offers reliability but is slower to deploy and carries regulatory uncertainty.
In this context, natural gas becomes the default option when large amounts of firm power are required quickly.
Carbon Capture in Practice
To address emissions, the proposal includes the possibility of carbon capture and storage (CCS). The approach involves capturing carbon dioxide at the power plant and storing it underground.
At the scale discussed in Nebraska, this would be among the largest CCS deployments in the United States.
Current CCS systems typically capture around 85 to 95 percent of carbon dioxide emissions at the plant level under optimal conditions. However, capture rates vary depending on plant design, operating conditions, and economic tradeoffs.
Even at high capture rates, CCS introduces an energy penalty. Operating the capture and compression systems can consume roughly 10 to 25 percent of a plant’s output, which increases the total amount of natural gas required to deliver the same net electricity.
There are also emissions outside the plant boundary. Natural gas production and transport are associated with methane leakage, typically estimated in the range of 1 to 3 percent of total production.
Because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, these upstream emissions can materially affect the overall climate impact of gas-fired power, even when carbon capture is applied at the plant.
Infrastructure requirements add another layer of uncertainty. Captured carbon dioxide must be transported, often by pipeline, and stored in geological formations that can securely contain it over long periods.
While these systems exist at smaller scales, multi-gigawatt deployments would require substantial expansion of both transport and storage capacity.
At typical capture rates and leakage assumptions, natural gas with carbon capture reduces emissions by roughly half—from about 450 g CO₂ per kWh to around 200–250 g CO₂e per kWh—leaving most remaining emissions in upstream methane leakage rather than at the power plant itself.
But even under optimistic assumptions, natural gas with CCS remains a bridge technology, not a final state for decarbonization.
Land Use and Agriculture
The project requires thousands of acres in a region dominated by corn and soybean production. Tenaska has already secured agreements covering more than 2,600 acres to assemble a potential site.
This introduces a different dimension to the story. Agricultural land is being evaluated not only for crop yield but for its proximity to pipelines, transmission infrastructure, and large-scale industrial use.
Local concerns reflect this shift:
- Potential competition for natural gas affecting fertilizer costs
- Water use for cooling data center operations
- Long-term changes in land value and ownership patterns
For a region built around agriculture, the arrival of large energy-intensive infrastructure changes how land is used and valued.
System-Level Implications
Shrink That Footprint has previously examined the environmental footprint of AI systems, including electricity demand and infrastructure growth. In our article on AI: Is It Bad for the Environment? (https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/ai-is-it-bad-for-the-environment/), we showed that inference—the day-to-day operation of models—now dominates energy use.
The Nebraska proposal shows how that demand translates into physical infrastructure. It reflects a chain of decisions: rising AI workloads increase electricity demand, which requires firm power, which in turn leads to choices about fuel sources and emissions controls.
This process can lead to tightly coupled systems where data centers and power plants are developed together on the same site, with dedicated fuel supply and emissions management infrastructure. These configurations reduce dependence on the broader grid but increase dependence on specific technologies and supply chains.
The key point is that electrification alone does not determine emissions. The source of that electricity—and the infrastructure built to deliver it—shapes the outcome.
Conclusion
The proposed Nebraska project brings together several forces that are often discussed separately: rapid growth in AI demand, constraints in electricity systems, and the challenge of reducing emissions.
LB1261 creates a pathway for private developers to build large power plants tied to individual industrial users. Natural gas provides a practical solution for delivering power at scale within current constraints. Carbon capture is introduced to reduce emissions, but it does not fully eliminate them.
The result is a system that reflects present-day trade-offs. It meets immediate demand while introducing long-term dependencies on fuel supply, infrastructure, and policy choices.
What is happening in Nebraska provides a clear example of how digital infrastructure is shaping physical systems. Decisions made at the level of land, legislation, and energy supply will determine how that relationship evolves over the coming decades.
Methods
This analysis uses a simplified lifecycle estimate to compare natural gas generation with and without carbon capture. Baseline emissions for combined-cycle natural gas are taken as ~450 g CO₂ per kWh at the plant level.
Applying a 90% capture rate reduces direct emissions to ~45 g CO₂ per kWh. A 20% energy penalty for operating the capture system increases fuel use, raising residual emissions to ~50–60 g CO₂ per kWh.
Upstream methane leakage is then added, assuming a 2% leakage rate and a 100-year global warming potential of 28× CO₂, contributing roughly 150–200 g CO₂e per kWh. Summing these components yields a total lifecycle estimate of ~200–250 g CO₂e per kWh for natural gas with carbon capture, compared to ~450 g CO₂ per kWh without capture.
