Meta has broken ground on a data center campus in Lebanon, Indiana, designed to deliver 1GW of capacity once operational, and says the project represents an investment of more than $10 billion in the facility and the surrounding community. It is the company's second site in Indiana and, by its own account, one of its largest infrastructure commitments to date.
The campus sits inside the Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace district, known locally as LEAP. Indiana Capital Chronicle, whose reporter attended the ceremony, puts the build at 13 buildings covering four million square feet across 1,500 acres, of which 10 are data center buildings and the remainder are logistics, warehousing and administrative support space.
Timing matters more than square footage to anyone planning around the site. Rachel Peterson, Meta's vice president of data centers, told the audience the first phase should be online by late 2027 or early 2028, according to Indiana Capital Chronicle. Construction is expected to support more than 4,000 jobs at peak, with approximately 300 operational jobs once the campus runs.
Cooling is closed loop and liquid. Meta says the system recirculates the same water and will use zero water for a majority of the year, phrasing that leaves the remainder of the year unquantified. The company also says it will restore 100 percent of the water it consumes in Lebanon to local watersheds, partly through an irrigation project with Arable in Indiana's Upper Wabash River Basin that it expects to restore 200 million gallons a year for ten years, and partly by revitalising a section of the Deer Creek stream.
On power, the commitment is a match rather than a direct supply. Meta says it is matching 100 percent of the new data center's energy use with clean energy, that it pays the full cost of the energy its data centers consume, and that it plans with utilities years in advance. Peterson described that as putting new clean and renewable supply onto the grid through solar and wind projects in the region, according to Indiana Capital Chronicle. Matching is measured against total consumption, which is not the same as the campus drawing clean power in every hour it runs.
Public infrastructure forms part of the package. Meta says it will invest more than $120 million over the course of the project toward water infrastructure in Lebanon and other public improvements including roads, transmission lines and utility upgrades. Separate commitments include $1 million a year for 20 years to the Boone REMC Community Fund for energy bill assistance and a workforce development program run with the Boone County Career Collaborative across three school districts.
The state's contribution is performance based. Indiana Capital Chronicle reports that the Indiana Economic Development Corporation committed a 35-year data center sales tax exemption tied to a minimum $1 billion of eligible capital invested within the first six years, with additional five-year periods available for the first further $2.2 billion and each additional $1.6 billion invested within 17 years, up to a total of 50 years, claimable only once the investment and jobs land.
For infrastructure buyers, the detail worth marking is the cooling rather than the headline capital number, because a gigawatt campus built on closed-loop liquid cooling with no water draw for most of the year is the reference design colocation providers will increasingly be asked to match. For engineers sizing grid-connected capacity, the energy language repays a careful read, since a match describes what the operator procures against its annual load rather than what physically feeds the site on a still winter night.
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