Enbridge Greenlights $900 Million Clear Fork Solar Project Powering Meta
- Enbridge will spend US$900 m to build the 600 MW Clear Fork solar farm near San Antonio, supplying all output to Meta’s data centres from 2027.
Canadian pipeline and energy giant Enbridge Inc has taken a definitive step into large-scale solar by approving the US$900 million Clear Fork project outside San Antonio, Texas. The 600-MW photovoltaic park—already under early-stage construction—will feed every megawatt-hour it produces to Meta Platforms under a long-term power purchase agreement, backing the tech firm’s electricity-hungry data-centre expansion across the US Sun Belt.
Scheduled to enter service in the summer of 2027, Clear Fork will rank among the largest single-site solar facilities in North America, spanning roughly 3,500 acres of former ranchland in Kinney and Uvalde counties. Enbridge expects the project to be immediately accretive to cash flow and earnings once it switches on, highlighting the company’s continuing pivot toward contracted, low-risk renewable assets. “Clear Fork demonstrates the surging demand for clean power from blue-chip technology customers,” said Matthew Akman, Enbridge’s EVP of corporate strategy and head of power.
The investment deepens Enbridge’s US renewables footprint, which already tops 2 GW of operating wind and solar capacity. Management says the company will fund construction through a mix of retained earnings and sustainable debt, with project-level tax credits helping to keep the after-tax return in the high single digits. Engineering, procurement and construction contracts were let earlier this year, and major equipment orders—including high-efficiency bifacial modules and single-axis trackers—have been placed to lock in supply-chain pricing.
For Meta, the deal adds another 600 MW of renewable energy to a portfolio that already exceeds 16 GW worldwide. The social-media parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has pledged to match its global operations with 100 % renewable electricity and achieve net-zero emissions across its value chain by 2030. In June, the company inked 791 MW of new wind and solar offtakes with Invenergy; Clear Fork pushes Meta even closer to that goal while hedging long-term power costs in the volatile Texas ERCOT market.
Clear Fork also underscores Texas’ emergence as a corporate-sponsored renewable powerhouse. The Lone Star State already leads the US in utility-scale solar additions, thanks to abundant land, low interconnection costs and a permissive regulatory environment. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie project Texas will install another 14 GW of solar by 2028—much of it anchored by hyperscale data-centre demand from firms like Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft.
As construction crews grade access roads and pour first foundations, Enbridge says it is evaluating “several gigawatts” of follow-on solar and storage opportunities across the United States. Clear Fork, meanwhile, is poised to become a flagship asset—proving that even a century-old pipeline operator can thrive in a software-defined, zero-carbon future.
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