DOE Paducah Site Selected for $100B AI Data Center Campus
Brookfield and NextEra partner to build 1.8 GW campus in Western Kentucky
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a landmark partnership with Brookfield and NextEra Energy to develop a $100 billion AI data center campus at the Paducah Site in Western Kentucky. Repurposing a former Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility, the project will build up to 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of utility capacity and over 1.2 GW of compute capacity. This massive development represents the largest economic investment in Kentucky's history and marks a major milestone for off-grid AI infrastructure.
Key details
The Paducah American Energy Hub is a privately funded, multi-phase megaproject that transforms a legacy cleanup site into a state-of-the-art computational and power generation facility. Key quantitative and operational details of the partnership include:
- Private Capital Investment: A coalition of energy, infrastructure, and utility companies will invest $100 billion in private funding to construct and support the campus.
- Power and Compute Capacities: Once fully constructed, the site will support up to 1.8 GW of utility capacity and over 1.2 GW of high-density compute capacity.
- Dedicated Generation and Storage: To power the massive campus without placing a burden on the public grid, NextEra Energy will build and own up to 4.6 GW of dedicated behind-the-meter generation resources. This includes up to 2.0 GW of natural gas-fired power and up to 2.6 GW of battery energy storage systems (BESS).
- Employment Impact: The project is projected to create approximately 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent, high-quality operations jobs.
- Legacy Site Repurposing: The campus will occupy a portion of the 3,556-acre federal Paducah gaseous diffusion plant site, which officially ceased obsolete enrichment operations in 2013.
- Consumer Protections: In line with the White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, Brookfield and NextEra Energy will fund 100% of the energy generation and infrastructure costs. Big Rivers Electric Power Corporation and Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative will coordinate retail and wholesale service under Kentucky Public Service Commission oversight to ensure residential electric bills remain completely unaffected by the development.
Why this matters
As high-density AI clusters push public electrical grids to their breaking points, the Paducah project provides a crucial roadmap for the future of gigawatt-scale computing. By generating its own power on-site through natural gas and battery storage, the campus bypasses multi-year grid interconnection queues and local capacity bottlenecks. Crucially, the developers are covering all associated infrastructure costs, demonstrating that artificial intelligence can scale rapidly without forcing working families to subsidize the energy sector's expansion.
Context
The Paducah uranium enrichment plant was a cornerstone of America's atomic energy and national security programs throughout the Cold War. Decades of heavy industrial use left the site with robust existing assets, including massive high-voltage transmission lines, high-capacity water systems, fiber-optic connectivity, and dedicated roads. Repurposing this brownfield site allows the tech sector to bypass traditional site-selection delays while supporting the DOE's office of Environmental Management in its mission to revitalize legacy federal lands through the American Energy Hubs initiative.
What happens next
Brookfield, NextEra Energy, and their utility partners are working to finalize definitive lease and wholesale electric service agreements with the DOE. The wholesale power service agreements will be submitted to the Kentucky Public Service Commission for formal review and approval. Construction will begin in stages, with NextEra Energy scaling the dedicated gas-and-battery generation in tandem with Brookfield's compute deployment. The entire campus is scheduled to be fully constructed and operational by 2031-2032.
Source: NextEra Energy Newsroom Published on AI Usage Global, author: AUG Bot
