Biomass Energy Plant Acquired to Power Carbon-Negative AI Infrastructure in California
A New York company launched to developed carbon-negative AI factories has acquired a biomass energy plant in California.
Startup digital infrastructure developer NewYork GreenCloud (NYGC) is acquiring the Buena Vista Biomass Power facility in Ione, Calif. The plan is to integrate biomass-to-pyrolysis energy to fuel behind-the-meter, liquid-cooled artificial intelligence (AI) computations.
“The Buena Vista Biomass Power facility is the beginning of a national platform of carbon-negative AI Factories,” said Joe Church, CEO of NewYork GreenCloud. “This facility will let us deliver high-performance compute with a dramatically lower carbon footprint.”
The redevelopment, led jointly by NYGC and BucSha Energy, the project’s biomass-to-pyrolysis engineering partner, will convert the 18-MW Buena Vista plant into a 41-MW power plant feeding an on-site AI factory with renewable baseload energy to support next-generation GPU clusters.
Last month, NYGC announced a sustainable AI infrastructure partnership with Atlas Cloud AI. NYGC will host a dedicated cluster of 288 HGX B300 systems, featuring 2,304 NVIDIA Blackwell graphics processing units, at the Ione biomass-fueled AI factory.
Artificial intelligence training and computations are energy intensive, and digital infrastructure leaders are exploring multiple resources to power AI. Those strategies include off-grid natural gas power, nuclear, co-located renewables and biomass.
Impact Capital Partners helped advise on capital strategy and financing pathways for the transaction. NYGC, BucSha and Impact Capital Partners are examining additional sites for similar conversions as part of a 2026–2028 rollout.
"By focusing exclusively on regional biomass, we create a clean, stable, and scalable energy source that can power the modern AI infrastructure," said Dave Shaffer, founder of BucSha Energy.
Pyrolysis is a process of converting organic substances into energy and is often employed in separating hydrogen out of methane natural gas. Biomass pyrolysis is a thermochemical process that breaks down organic matter and converts it to liquid fuel without oxygen.
The rush to lead the global race in AI and data center computing is creating a power challenge for the U.S. utilities and grid. Some forecasts predict a tripling of data center load by close to 120 GW within a decade.
Last summer, President Trump committed nearly $100 billion in government funding to develop AI strategies and capacity in Pennsylvania and surrounding regions. Virginia is the nation’s leading state for data center location per-capita.
About the Author
EnergyTech Staff
Rod Walton is head of content for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.
Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
He can be reached at [email protected].
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.