Google Lincoln data center, Lincoln, Nebraska

Google's data center campus in Lincoln, in Lancaster County, Nebraska, went by the code name Agate for four years before the company said it was behind it. Agate LLC filed for a $600 million data center campus in July 2019 and gained approval that September, but nothing was built on the site until groundwork began in 2023. Google confirmed the project in August 2023: roughly 580 acres near Interstate 80 and North 56th Street, as much as 2 million square feet of floor area, and at least 30 full-time jobs when complete. It is Google's third Nebraska site, after Papillion and Omaha, and the developers applied for state tax incentives for it.

Google's Nebraska data centers used about 732 million gallons of water in 2025, up from 134.7 million in 2023, in a state where the supply is uneven and often under drought.

That incentive program is now closed to data centers. On July 21, 2026, Governor Jim Pillen signed executive order 26-17, ending data centers' access to tax incentives under the ImagiNE Nebraska Act and requiring the departments of Economic Development, Revenue, and Water, Energy and Environment to review data center proposals together. "This is not a moratorium on data centers," Pillen said. The order also sets up a data center task force through the water department, which its director said would work with Nebraska's Natural Resources Districts.

Figures from the governor's office put the estimated property tax exemptions given to Nebraska data centers between January 1, 2021 and June 30, 2026 at $519 million, on $15 billion of exempted personal property. The Google data center in Lincoln and Monolith, which has proposed a center at Hallam, had not responded to 10/11's requests for comment. A state auditor's report earlier in 2026 put the cost of business incentives to Nebraska at more than $1.2 billion in lost revenue, and from North Platte to Nebraska City local governments have been dealing with data centers through moratoriums and recall votes. The task force is to give its recommendations to the Legislature.