On June 3, 2025, Meta and Constellation Energy announced a 20-year power purchase agreement covering the clean energy attributes of the Clinton Clean Energy Center, a 1,121-megawatt nuclear plant in central Illinois.The deal takes effect in June 2027, right when Illinois’ zero-emission credit (ZEC) support for the plant is set to expire.Terms were not disclosed; TechCrunch described it as a multibillion-dollar deal.
For Meta, the contract is part of a wider scramble to lock up firm, carbon-free electricity for AI-era data centers. For Constellation, it swaps a state subsidy for a market-rate customer committed to two decades of payments.
A 20-year clean energy attributes deal
Meta is not buying the plant, or even its electrons. Power from Clinton keeps flowing into the local grid, and does not directly supply Meta’s data center in DeKalb, roughly two hours north. What Meta buys is the clean energy attribute, which it uses to claim its consumption is matched by carbon-free generation under its goal of matching 100% of electricity use with clean energy.In other words, the carbon credit lands on Meta’s ledger while the physical power stays local. Note that the contract covers an existing plant, not new construction; for Constellation it locks down the most uncertain question — who buys the power for the next 20 years — and gives relicensing and upgrade spending a paying customer. For Meta it converts AI power use into green accounting, costlier than buying renewable certificates but far more certain.
For Constellation, the value is certainty. The plant was kept alive by Illinois’ ZEC program, which expires in 2027; Constellation said the deal essentially replaces the ZEC program with market-based revenue and keeps the plant running without ratepayer support, backing a license renewal.CEO Joe Dominguez argued that “supporting the relicensing and expansion of existing plants is just as impactful as finding new sources of energy.”
Clinton’s second life
Clinton’s history mirrors the ups and downs of US nuclear power. Cheap natural gas nearly killed the plant in 2017; the ZEC subsidies created by Illinois’ Future Energy Jobs Act kept it open.In 2022, Constellation announced plans to extend its license to 2047.Today the plant employs more than 530 people and can power over 800,000 homes.
The Meta deal adds about 30 MW of output through uprates, and Constellation may pursue a new or extended early site permit for a possible advanced reactor or small modular reactor at the site.The agreement preserves roughly 1,100 jobs, keeps about $13.5 million in annual local tax revenue flowing, and includes $1 million in charitable giving to local nonprofits over five years starting in 2026.
Why AI giants keep signing nuclear deals
“Securing clean, reliable energy is necessary to continue advancing our AI ambitions,” said Urvi Parekh, Meta’s head of global energy, in the announcement.Before this deal, Meta had solicited proposals for new nuclear plants generating 1 to 4 GW and received more than 50 qualified submissions from over 20 states.
The appeal of nuclear is concrete: near-zero carbon emissions, 24/7 output, large capacity on a single site, and no storage problem the way wind and solar have. As AI data center demand curves steepen, signing a 20-year nuclear PPA is the simplest way to lock in supply. That is why these deals keep coming: data center construction runs on year-scale timelines, grid expansion on decade-scale ones, and long contracts with existing firm power are the only bridge.
The precedent and what comes next
The earlier precedent everyone remembers is Microsoft’s September 2024 deal to buy all the power from a restarted Three Mile Island reactor — also from Constellation.The structures rhyme: tech giants do not build or operate the plants themselves; they use long-term contracts to reserve existing nuclear capacity, buying both supply certainty and clean-energy accounting.
For Constellation, this is the second run of the same playbook. For the industry, the signal is that extending and upgrading existing plants is seen as a faster path to power than new construction, and buyers are willing to commit for 20 years to get it.
What it means for builders and the grid
For developers, these deals will not change API bills this year, but they will shape where compute gets built and what power costs over the next decade: more data center investment will cluster around existing plants, and grid capacity planning will follow. Sites near firm power will keep winning in constrained regions.
One caveat worth remembering: buying clean energy attributes improves carbon accounting, not the grid’s actual emissions mix in the short term, and TechCrunch’s analysis notes a gap between the marketing language and where the electrons actually go. As AI’s bottleneck shifts from GPUs to electricity, expect energy contracts to become as routine in tech news as GPU quotas are today. The other thing to watch in the Clinton deal is the template itself: buying attributes rather than electrons lets corporate climate claims and actual grid supply drift apart — and the same structure is likely to be applied to more plants and more buyers.
Sources
- TechCrunch: Meta buys a nuclear power plant (more or less)
- Constellation press release: Constellation, Meta sign 20-year deal for clean, reliable nuclear energy in Illinois
AI-assisted summary compiled from the sources above, reviewed by a human before publishing.