Data Center Valley: Kazakhstan's $10B AI Hub Is Rising Next to a Coal Plant

In June 2026, the Kazakh government, U.S.-based Firebird, and NVIDIA announced a $10 billion package of agreements to build the Data Center Valley cluster next to the Ekibastuz GRES-1 power plant, one of the region's largest coal-fired stations. The project envisions 300 MW of infrastructure with room to scale to 1 GW, with the first phase due in 2027 and full build-out by 2033. The site's logic is straightforward: round-the-clock access to cheap coal power, an established industrial grid, and a cold climate that cuts server cooling costs.

That same logic is exactly what creates the story's central tension: turning Kazakh coal into an export-ready service for the global AI industry requires a flow of electricity comparable to that of an entire city — by some estimates, potentially more than Almaty's own thermal power plant consumes. Converting the neighboring TETs-2 and TETs-3 plants from coal to gas is meant to offset part of that, with officials citing emissions cuts of tens of percent — but the timeline for that conversion and the scale of the AI cluster itself are moving in parallel, not in sequence.

For us, this is a clear illustration of what any company stating climate goals in 2026 runs into in practice: AI infrastructure is growing faster than the power grid underneath it can green itself. It's exactly why, in our audits and green-project consulting, we always look past the stated target to the actual energy source behind whatever service or data center a business is actually using.