Oracle and BorderPlex Digital Assets say the Project Jupiter AI data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico will be powered entirely by Bloom Energy fuel cells, with up to 2.45 GW of installed capacity at the site. The design replaces the gas turbines and diesel generators in the earlier plan and consolidates the facility into a single microgrid campus.
Solid oxide fuel cells convert fuel to electricity electrochemically rather than by burning it, which is where the emissions claims come from. Compared with the turbines it previously planned, the companies say the campus will cut NOx emissions by approximately 92 percent and use a negligible amount of water. Neither figure has been independently measured; permit filings and post-commissioning stack testing would settle both.
Two capacity numbers are circulating and they measure different things. The 2.45 GW is installed fuel cell capacity at Jupiter. Data Center Dynamics reports that the wider Oracle and Bloom partnership, expanded earlier this month, covers procurement of up to 2.8 GW on top of 1.2 GW contracted the year before, so Jupiter accounts for most but not all of the committed volume.
“We are excited to move forward with this updated energy solution, which reflects our commitment to both the latest innovation and community priorities as we advance the next generation of AI infrastructure,” said Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Bloom’s fuel cell technology enables us to deliver highly reliable on-site power with a lower environmental footprint—supporting the project’s performance needs while contributing to stronger environmental outcomes.” The announcement puts no commissioning schedule against that capacity, names no fuel supplier or pipeline for the site, and publishes no electrical efficiency figure or heat rate for the installed fleet.
Fuel type is the open question for anyone modelling operating cost or scope one emissions here. Bloom says the platform is fuel agnostic. “Our platform works with natural gas, biogas, and hydrogen,” Aman Joshi, chief commercial officer at Bloom Energy, told Data Center Dynamics. The Jupiter announcement does not say which of the three the campus will run on, and the delivered cost per megawatt hour differs sharply between them.
Cooling is handled separately. Oracle has said the campus will use a closed-loop, non-evaporative system that does not draw from the local water supply, and that it will bear all energy costs for the project so residential rates and grid stability are unaffected. Project Jupiter has committed $50 million toward local water system repairs and upgrades, $360 million in direct support for schools, infrastructure and local services, and $6.9 million for workforce development and community programs.
For comparison, Bloom's other data center commitments are an order of magnitude smaller. Data Center Dynamics reports deployments with Equinix across 19 data centers exceeding 100 MW in total, and an agreement with American Electric Power for up to 1 GW of solid oxide fuel cells for off-grid AI data centers.
The practical lesson for infrastructure buyers is that on-site generation is now being specified at gigawatt scale for a single campus, and that this swap was justified publicly on air quality, water use and community priorities rather than on capital cost. Engineers evaluating a similar swap should ask for the commissioning schedule, the fuel contract, and the efficiency figures that none of the announcement material provides.
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