Meta has withdrawn from RE100, the global corporate renewable energy initiative, after investments in new natural gas power plants made the company ineligible to meet the program's technical criteria. The departure was first reported by Recharge and confirmed by Climate Group, the UK nonprofit that oversees the initiative. Climate Group told Recharge that Meta "is no longer able to meet the technical criteria due to investments made in new gas power." (Engadget)

Meta joined RE100 in 2016, committing to source 100% renewable energy by 2020. The company had previously reported reducing its operational emissions by 94% from a 2017 baseline, primarily by supporting its data centers and offices with renewable energy. Roughly half of that renewable energy portfolio ran through utility partnerships covering facilities in Virginia, Oregon, and Utah. Meta also launched the Clean Energy Procurement Academy (CEPA) to help other organizations scale clean energy purchasing.

The withdrawal follows a significant shift in Meta's energy procurement strategy. Earlier in 2025, Meta announced it would fund seven new natural gas plants to power its data centers. Since last year, the company has committed to 10 natural gas plant projects in total. According to TechCrunch, those 10 plants will produce enough energy to power the state of South Dakota.

Meta has also pursued non-renewable-alternative sources. Last year the company signed a deal with Sage Geosystems for 150 MW of geothermal power for its data center operations, part of a broader effort to find firm clean energy that can meet the round-the-clock demands of AI training and inference workloads. Geothermal is considered firm because it provides steady power regardless of weather, unlike solar or wind.

Meta told TechCrunch it remains committed to "100% clean and renewable energy" and characterized leaving RE100 as a "mutual" decision. The company's public sustainability materials still reference net-zero ambitions and clean energy procurement programs.

RE100 counts more than 400 member organizations, including Microsoft, Google, and Apple — Meta's closest hyperscale peers, all of which remain in the initiative. The program requires members to meet technical criteria around renewable energy sourcing, and Climate Group's statement makes clear that Meta's gas investments placed it outside those criteria rather than the company simply choosing to disengage.

The structural tension here is familiar to anyone tracking the hyperscaler buildout. AI training clusters and inference deployments are driving unprecedented electricity demand, and that demand is baseload-shaped — it runs at a constant high level around the clock, unlike consumer internet traffic, which rises and falls through the day. Renewable energy procurement through power purchase agreements, or PPAs — contracts where a company agrees to buy renewable energy from a producer — works on an annual net basis. A company matches its yearly renewable energy purchases to its yearly consumption. It does not guarantee that every kilowatt flowing into a data center at 2 a.m. comes from a renewable source. As long as a company's aggregate annual renewable purchases matched or exceeded its consumption, RE100 criteria could be satisfied.

Ten natural gas plants change that equation. Gas-fired generation is dispatchable and firm, meaning it can be turned on or off as needed and runs reliably regardless of weather — which is precisely why Meta is turning to it. But gas is also fossil-derived, and the scale of Meta's commitments, enough capacity to power South Dakota, means the company's energy mix is materially shifting, not just adding a marginal hedge.

The broader context here is that Meta left RE100 not by choice alone but by becoming technically ineligible, according to Climate Group, while Meta called the departure "mutual." Those are two different characterizations of the same event, and the gap between them is where the story lives. Meta is not abandoning clean energy as a stated goal. It is building the infrastructure that makes that goal harder to honor on the terms it previously accepted.

The hyperscaler energy story has cycled through phases before. The cloud buildout of the 2010s drove PPA procurement at scale and made corporate renewable purchasing a meaningful market force. The AI buildout is driving something different: a demand curve so steep and so baseload-intensive that even companies with deep renewable portfolios are reaching for thermal generation. Meta's geothermal deal with Sage Geosystems suggests the company is not uninterested in firm clean energy. But geothermal at 150 MW is a fraction of what 10 gas plants will deliver.

What remains is a company simultaneously funding a Clean Energy Procurement Academy, maintaining public net-zero commitments, and building fossil generation at a scale that got it ejected from the world's most prominent corporate renewable energy initiative. Whether those threads can be reconciled over time, or whether AI-driven demand has permanently shifted the economics of hyperscale energy procurement away from the RE100 model, is the question the rest of the industry will now be weighing.