OPINION: Google’s New Nuclear Deal Offers Utah an Energy Roadmap — Bring the Monies Required, and a Transparent Plan, to Pay for Future Power Needs
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
✅ The new 20-year agreement Google announced yesterday with Constellation Energy will support more than $4.3 billion of investment to add 890 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity from existing plants.
✅ For Utah, the larger lesson is not simply about nuclear power; it's about pairing extraordinary new electrical loads with new generation, and requiring the customers creating those loads to help make that capacity financeable.
✅ Google is already applying a version of that model in Utah through a 396-megawatt agreement with Fervo Energy (with an option for approximately 600MW more), to help support a potential Utah data center.
✅ Although opportunities are substantial, Utah first should insist that multibillion-dollar data center and energy developments move forward transparently, with existing ratepayers protected and affected communities involved early.
7 October 2026 — LEHI, Utah — Google and Constellation Energy announced yesterday a new 20-year nuclear agreement covering power generation across 3 states in the eastern part of the United States.
But the most important thing about this agreement is probably not the nuclear power itself.
Instead, it's bankability, bankability that I believe provides a promising roadmap for Utah.
Under terms of the agreement, Google committed to a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation Energy supporting upgrades at 11 Constellation-owned nuclear units across six sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
Those upgrades are expected to add 890 megawatts of new generating capacity to the grid operated by PJM Interconnection, which serves all or parts of 13 states and Washington, D.C., roughly equivalent to another large nuclear reactor without building one from scratch.
As the two companies announced, Constellation Energy plans to invest more than $4.3 billion to make it happen. Why?
Because Google has given Constellation Energy something extraordinarily valuable:
A customer willing to commit for 20 years of payments.
That kind of revenue certainty can help transform prospective energy investment into financeable energy investment.
Wall Street apparently viewed the implications favorably as Constellation Energy shares closed Tuesday at $300.40, up $32.78, or 12.25%.
Clearly, one trading day proves nothing by itself, but a 12%-plus jump suggests investors saw something larger than another power purchase agreement.
{AUTHOR'S NOTE: Today, CEG shares closed down fractionally at $299.59, retaining most of the gained value from Tuesday, which is fairly impressive especially when Wall Street was "red across the board," with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) down 0.66% today.}
The bottom line: Google already had the demand and the need, but what changed Tuesday was the perceived value of the future supply of energy.
So why does this agreement on the other side of the country matter here in Utah? Keep reading.
Utah’s Power Problem Has Already Arrived
Literally two years ago, on 8 October 2024, Gov. Spencer Cox unveiled Operation Gigawatt with an intentionally enormous objective:
Double Utah’s power production within 10 years.
Now, two years later, that ambition looks less aspirational than mathematical.
An August 2026 Utah Legislature policy briefing says data centers under construction in Utah will require approximately 2,600 megawatts of additional power by the time they come online, compared with average statewide electrical demand of approximately 4,000 megawatts during 2025.
In other words, this was not a theoretical shortage decades away that Governor Cox raised two years ago.
No, if anything, it was quite prescient.
In fact, based upon construction projects currently underway in the state, some one, some organization, still has to
🔸 Build the infrastructure,
🔸 Produce the power, and
🔸 Pay for it.
Thankfully, Utah has already begun addressing these issues.
Under S.B. 132 (enacted in 2025 to establish a new framework for serving exceptionally large electrical loads), customers requiring 100MW or more of new power must
🔴 Contract for their projected electrical requirements, while the incremental costs of serving those loads must be
🔴 Paid for by the large customer rather than shifted onto existing ratepayers.
That makes the Google-Constellation Energy agreement particularly relevant here in Utah as it demonstrates the market version of essentially the same idea as found within Utah's S.B 132:
If your business creates extraordinary new demand for electricity, help create the economic conditions necessary to produce and pay for the power needed to serve it.
Google Is Already Doing this in Utah
This is where Tuesday’s national story becomes a Utah story. Here's why.
On 1 September 2026, Houston, Texas-based Fervo Energy announced a 396-megawatt power purchase agreement with Google involving electricity expected to come from Cape Station, its next-generation geothermal development in Beaver County, Utah.
Google also received an option for additional power of ~600MW, potentially bringing the total to nearly one gigawatt by June 2030.
Fervo Energy also said that its Cape Station electricity may help support a potential Google data center in Utah.
And then on 30 September 2026, the first 33-megawatt generating block at Cape Station began generating revenue as it entered commercial operation.
An additional 400 megawatts are currentkly under construction at Cape Station for expected delivery in 2028.
To be clear, the first 33MW of power generation at Cape Station are not for Google, per se, but they establish something important:
Cape Station is no longer simply proposed. Instead, it is producing electricity and revenue in Utah today.
To me, the symmetry between the Google / Fervo relationship out of Cape Station is fascinating, especially in light of Google's new 20-year, financial commitment with Constellation Energy to finance additional nuclear production.
The primary difference, of course, is that in Utah, Google has entered into a long-term arrangement supporting dramatically more geothermal production.
Different technologies, yes, but the same fundamental equation:
🟣 The customer needs enormous amounts of power,
🟣 The developer needs capital, and
🟣. Long-term demand can make new supply more financeable.
Nuclear? Yes. But It's Not the Whole Answer
None of this diminishes the nuclear significance of Tuesday’s Google / Constellation announcement as it shows that one of the world’s largest technology companies places substantial economic value on dependable nuclear generation.
That reality potentially carries great weight in Utah, where the Utah Office of Energy Development is conducting nuclear-energy outreach statewide and examining how advanced nuclear generation might fit within Utah’s future energy portfolio.
I also suspect such a reality is crucial to California-based Valar Atomics, which is developing and testing its nuclear technology in Utah.
In fact, Valar's Ward 250 Small Modular Reactor (SMR) reached self-sustaining criticality at the San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County in June, then subsequently reached full power and generated electricity on 1 July 2026.
Tuesday’s Google / Constellation agreement does not prove Valar Atomics’ commercial reactor economics or eliminate regulatory, technological, financing, or execution risk.
But it reinforces two fundamentals about the market Valar Atomics is pursuing:
✔️ Certain customers need enormous quantities of dependable electricity, and
✔️ Some customers appear increasingly willing to make extraordinary long-term commitments to secure such dependable electricity.
That validates the problem, even if it does not yet validate Valar Atomics’ particular solution.
Utah Already Has More Than One Energy Answer
The State of Utah would be mistaken if it interpreted Tuesday’s announcement as evidence that nuclear has won and every competing technology has lost.
Salt Lake City-based rPlus Energies placed its Green River Energy Center into commercial operation in Emery County this summer.
That project has 400MW of solar generation plus a 400MW/1,600MWh battery energy-storage system, while its construction debt financing alone exceeded $1 billion.
Obviously, solar plus storage does not perform precisely the same function as nuclear or geothermal generation.
But the rPlus Green River Energy Center proves Utah can
✅ Attract capital measured in the billions,
✅ Build utility-scale energy infrastructure, and
✅ Put it into commercial operation.
Separately, Salt Lake City-based Zanskar, is developing another electricity pathway through conventional geothermal, but uses artificial intelligence and advanced geoscience to locate previously overlooked resources.
The company already operates a utility-scale geothermal power plant in New Mexico and is pursuing geothermal opportunities in Utah, including
🟥 Operations in Dog Valley in Millard County, and on
🟥 Approximately 2,556 acres of state trust lands in Iron County.
That is the strength of Operation Gigawatt.
And yet, Utah still needs
🔷 More power,
🔷 Reliable power,
🔷 Affordable power, and
🔷 Enough power diversity that the state does not bet its economic future on one
▪️ Technology,
▪️ Fuel source,
▪️ Company, or
▪️ Project.
Get Public "Buy-In" as Well
But energy abundance alone cannot and must not become a blank check for every proposed data center or electricity-sucking project.
Case in point, the now-on-hold STRATOS data center endeavor proposed by O’Leary Ventures in Box Elder County offers a cautionary example.
As previously reported in these pages by Utah Money Watch, the STRATOS project contemplated more than $4 billion for its first 500MW phase and expenditures approaching $20 billion as the project scaled toward 3GW.
Yet major questions involving
🟠 Power,
🟠 Water,
🟠 Environmental risks,
🟠 Financing,
🟠 Tenants, and
🟠 Infrastructure
either remained unresolved publicly or emerged only after the project was well along in the governmental approval process.
In hindsight, I wonder if possible backroom dealings and sizable hubris from the O'Leary Ventures' side of the table essentially doomed this endeavor from the start — at least for now.
That, in part, is why Gov. Cox has since called for a “transparent, accountable public process” for major data center proposals, as shown in his Executive Order of 29 May 2026.
Clearly, projects of such magnitude need more than capital and electricity; they also need community trust.
As such, Utah’s energy development model should demand both
More energy and more transparency.
Suggestion? Bring the Power With the Load
The ultimate lesson I take from the Google-Constellation Energy agreement is this:
Utah should not merely find enough electricity to accommodate whatever enormous energy loads happen to arrive on the state's doorstep.
Instead, the state should use those load requirements to accelerate investment in Utah’s underlying energy economy.
Imagine the competitive advantage if companies seeking hundreds or thousands of megawatts in Utah arrive not simply with a data center proposal, but with
⚫️ Financing commitments,
⚫️ Long-term power contracts,
⚫️ Generation partners,
⚫️ Transmission plans, and
⚫️ Credible strategies for serving those energy requirements.
That turns one of Utah’s largest emerging economic challenges into a capital-formation opportunity, across
🟢 Nuclear,
🟢 Solar,
🟢 Geothermal,
🟢 Natural gas,
🟢 Transmission, and
🟢 Distributed storage, as well as the organizations needed to
▪️ Design,
▪️ Build,
▪️ Operate, and
▪️ Pay for them.
Tuesday’s agreement on the other side of the U.S. does not tell Utah which technology will produce its next gigawatt. Rather, it shows us something potentially more valuable:
When demand is large enough, and customers are committed enough, new power can not only become financeable, it can be beneficial for society at large.
I believe the vision behind Operation Gigawatt should help create a growing and widening energy marketplace within the state of Utah, an energy ecosystem where
🔶 New demand helps finance new supply,
🔶 Existing Utah ratepayers are protected, and
🔶 Communities understand what is being proposed BEFORE
🔶 Multibillion-dollar projects become "faits accomplis."
Perhaps the principle is remarkably simple:
If you want to add 100MW or more of electricity demand to the grid in Utah, be prepared to show how that demand will be paid for without placing new financial burdens on the state or its people.
Publisher's Note
Utah Money Watch reports and analyzes companies, transactions, securities, valuations and financial outcomes for informational and journalistic purposes. Nothing published by Utah Money Watch is intended as individualized investment advice or as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.
As such, this writeup was originally published and distributed to our Subscribers at approximately 06:30pm MT on Wednesday, 07 October 2026.
However, if this report/article came to your attention sometime after this date/time and you'd like to change that, then (to become a Free Subscriber), please
1. Click on a "Subscribe" button on any Utah Money Watch webpage (visit www.UtahMoneyWatch.com),
2. Enter your name in the proper field in the popup window that appears on-screen, and
3. Enter your preferred email address in the proper field too.
That's it. You've now joined the ranks of our Free Subscribers.
So, thanks.
The Utah Money Watch Team
Comments ()