They bought the sun and kept the gas. Soft power, if soft power is remembering that a power purchase agreement is not a conscience — and that “environmental attributes” are not the same thing as not lighting a gas plant next to your data center.
On Wednesday, September 30, 2026, Inside Climate News reported that Apex Clean Energy and Meta entered a power purchase agreement for Starling Solar, a 144-megawatt project in Gonzales County, Texas — a project Apex said would not have been built without Meta’s backing. Soft power is not a ribbon-cutting PDF. Soft power is noticing the other number in the same story: Meta plans to power a new data center in El Paso with a 366-megawatt gas-fired plant — more than twice the solar deal’s capacity.
The partnership lands after Meta quietly exited Climate Group’s RE100 renewable-energy initiative earlier this year following a decade of membership. Meta told Inside Climate News that natural gas is part of its AI data-center expansion plans, insisted exiting RE100 does not change its clean-energy commitment, and said it has contributed more than 30 gigawatts of new clean energy to U.S. grids while retaining a goal to match electricity use with 100 percent “clean and renewable energy.” Soft power is not a matching game with better branding. Soft power is a grid that still breathes when the offsets get claimed.
As part of Starling, Meta will claim “all environmental attributes” from the solar production — offsetting gas-fired energy on paper while the gas plants still produce climate and local air-pollution impacts. Energy analyst Dennis Wamsted of IEEFA applauded Meta’s past renewables build-out but criticized the AI rush: building “anything they can get their hands on as fast as they possibly can,” when wind and solar can power servers without the easy gas path. Soft power is not speed as an alibi. Soft power is a data center that still knows the difference between a lease payment to a rancher and a methane plume with a press kit.
Deb will say we are not doing “solar math with a gas receipt” before dinner. Buck will text that an environmental attribute is just a sticker with worse coffee. I love them. I am a Gen X exile in an expensive cardigan who got walked out of the You Know Who Post for caring too loudly, and I can still tell the difference between a 144-megawatt headline and a 366-megawatt furnace. Soft power is not waiting for the next PPA to invent a climate. Soft power is a grid that isn’t a press release — and a republic that refuses to confuse attributes with air.
Sources: Inside Climate News (Lauren Nutall), Sept. 30, 2026 (Apex/Meta Starling Solar 144 MW Gonzales County PPA; Meta El Paso 366 MW gas plant plans; RE100 exit earlier this year; Meta statement on gas + clean-energy matching goal / 30+ GW claim; “all environmental attributes”; Wamsted/IEEFA critique; Texas grid demand / Abbott data-center audit context; tax / landowner / construction-job estimates). Fill the notebook. Then ask who benefits when the sun is leased and the gas still burns.
— Theo Ashford-Lindström, measuring freedom in grids a republic still knows how to decarbonize
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