Google broke ground April 9 on a $600 million data center in Alabama. The project was announced in June 2015 and is the state's first large-scale data center and Google's eighth in the U.S.

The data center will occupy 360 acres adjacent to the Widows Creek coal-fired power plant, which was decommissioned in 2015 by the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA is working with Google to provide renewable energy to fully match the facility’s power usage.

The company was one of the first to begin buying renewables on a large scale in 2010 and says it achieved 100 percent renewable energy for its operations in 2017.

When it enters service, the data center is expected to employ around 100 people.