OpenAI’s latest infrastructure budget is now $750 billion through 2030 — a 25% jump from its earlier projection and a number so large it practically demands a double-take. The Wall Street Journal first reported the figure on Wednesday, and the first concrete piece of that spending is already coming into focus. It’s a $20 billion data center project in Effingham County, Georgia, called Project Camellia, which will sprawl across 1,400 acres northwest of Savannah.
This isn’t a lean, solar-powered experiment. Georgia Power will supply at least 3.2 gigawatts to the site between 2028 and 2032, a draw so significant that OpenAI has agreed to shoulder all infrastructure and electric-service costs. That’s a direct response to a new Georgia Public Service Commission rule that prevents utilities from passing those costs to other ratepayers for any user pulling more than 100 megawatts. OpenAI also gets a generous 15-year, 50% property tax abatement from the county. The company has promised to dial back its consumption by up to 1 gigawatt when the grid is under stress, a nod to reliability concerns that doesn’t quite erase the scale of the demand.
So what’s burning to power the AGI dream? The filings point overwhelmingly to fossil fuels. To meet OpenAI’s needs and other demand, Georgia Power got approval last December to add 9,885 megawatts of new capacity, and the OpenAI deal alone eats up about a third of that. Most of that new capacity — roughly 5.8 gigawatts — will come from natural gas, with a quarter of that from simple-cycle turbines that are dirtier and less efficient. It more than doubles the utility’s existing gas fleet. The remainder will come from batteries and solar, but the heavy lifting is clearly being done by gas.
The timeline for flipping the switch on the first GPUs is still murky, though OpenAI’s recent hiring of Brett Mayo, who led xAI’s Memphis data center build, suggests speed is a priority. That’s not necessarily a comforting sign. Mayo’s Colossus project was built in record time but is now the subject of an NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center lawsuit, accused of running dozens of unpermitted natural gas turbines and worsening local air quality. OpenAI didn’t say when Project Camellia would be operational, but it’s already leaving a carbon-shaped footprint on the Georgia coast.
