Texas energy technology company Baker Hughes and Frontier Infrastructure (Frontier), a Dallas-headquartered developer of low-carbon infrastructure projects, have partnered to advance the development of large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) and power generation projects in the US, including infrastructure to support rising energy demand from data centres.
The collaboration will focus on Frontier’s Sweetwater Carbon Storage Hub in Wyoming, one of the country’s largest open-access CO2 sequestration sites. Spanning nearly 100,000 acres, the hub will serve industrial emitters and ethanol producers, with CO2 transported via rail. Frontier has begun drilling and expects first injection of CO2 later this year.
Baker Hughes will provide CCS and power generation technologies, including CO2 compression, well design, and long-term monitoring. It will also supply gas turbines for Frontier’s 256 MW behind-the-meter gas-fired power project, aimed at supporting data centres and industrial customers in Wyoming, Texas and the states that comprise the Mountain West.
“With energy demand rising across the country, industrial customers need scalable, low-carbon solutions,” said Robby Rockey, President and co-CEO of Frontier Infrastructure.
Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli said the partnership demonstrated how carbon storage and gas-fired power can support lower-carbon industrial development .
The partnership highlights the increasing overlap between CCS and power generation as artificial intelligence-related demand and industrial reshoring drive increased energy needs. A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed that Google, Microsoft, and Amazon spent more on AI and data centres in 2023 than the entire US oil and gas sector, amounting to 0.5% of US GDP.
Read more: AI boom and industrial reshoring fuel global gas demand surge
The IEA also predicts that up to 8% of the US grid could be powering data centres by 2030, with data centres forecast to account for 65% to 85% of projected load growth in several states.
The surge in energy demand from data centres is not limited to the US. A 2024 McKinsey report projects data centre power consumption in Europe will triple by 2030, reaching 35 GW across the EU, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. In Ireland, data centres already account for more than 20% of electricity use.
Meanwhile, the UK data centre market is set to grow by nearly $38bn by 2028, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ aiming to expand public compute capacity 20-fold by 2030.
Read more: Energy and grid build-out prospects are changing
Decarbonising the wider supply chain
Baker Hughes has also announced a new partnership with Australian oil and gas company Woodside Energy to develop small-scale decarbonisation technology using the Net Power platform, which works by using natural gas to generate affordable power while inherently capturing nearly all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
The initiative aims to create lower-carbon power solutions for industries including oil and gas, LNG, and heavy manufacturing. Baker Hughes and Woodside will assess the feasibility and scalability of Net Power’s system, which generates electricity from natural gas while capturing nearly all CO2 emissions. The project builds on their 2022 MoU focused on decarbonising the natural gas supply chain.
“Today’s announcement is a tangible commitment to continue technology innovation and market development for the Net Power platform and to bring ultra-low emissions energy solutions to a power-hungry world,” said Danny Rice, CEO of Net Power.
