Google LLC today revealed it’s making strong progress towards its goal of operating entirely on full-time carbon-free energy by 2030, becoming the first major corporation in the world to invest in what it calls “next-level geothermal energy.”

It also announced that its “carbon-intelligent” computing platform can now shift flexible compute tasks among different data centers in order to take advantage of renewable energy sources when and where they’re available.

Google set itself the ambitious target of operating on 24/7 carbon-free power by 2030 last September, saying it will need to come up with new transaction structures, advance clean energy policy and embrace innovative new technologies to achieve that goal. And now it has become one of the first companies in the world to adopt one of those new technologies in the shape of a “next-generation geothermal project” that it says will add a significant amount of carbon-free energy to the electricity grid that its Nevada data centers tap into.

Google is working with a clean energy startup called Fervo Energy Co. and has signed an agreement with it to tap into its “always-on” carbon-free energy resources. It said that Fervo will add what it calls “firm” geothermal energy to the Nevada electric grid system in 2022 that Google will then tap into to power its data centers and infrastructure there.

Fervo uses a combination of horizontal drilling techniques and distributed fiber optic sensing to dramatically increase the productivity and lifetime of existing geothermal wells. The fiber optic cables are pushed deep inside geothermal wells to gather real-time data on flow, temperature and performance. Using this data, Fervo can identify exactly where the best resources are located and better control the flow of that resource at different depths.

As part of today’s deal, Fervo said it will work with Google to develop new artificial intelligence and machine learning software that will be able to boost geothermal well productivity even further. That could make it more effective at responding to demand and filling in the gaps left by more variable renewable energy sources.

It’s an important development because one of the biggest problems of renewable energy sources is that they’re often unreliable. Geothermal wells don’t always produce enough power to meet demand, wind power is available only when it’s windy enough and solar panels can generate power only when the sun is shining on them.

Google is using its software expertise to try to solve those problems too. Although the company is already carbon-neutral, it achieves that only by purchasing renewable energy and transferring it back into the grid to match its total electricity consumption. In other words, its data centers still rely on fossil fuels at certain times, when renewable energy sources aren’t available.

Google intends to put a stop to that and “completely decarbonize” its energy use for every hour of every day by 2030. To do so, it’s relying on its carbon-intelligent computing platform to tap into as much clean energy as is possible.

The carbon-intelligent platform came online last year. It works by shifting the timing of certain compute tasks in order to maximize its use of renewable energy from low-carbon power sources. So, for example, nonurgent tasks such as creating new filters for Google Photos will be performed only at a specific data center when that facility is able to tap into a renewable power source, such as solar power during daytime hours.

Now, Google has gone one step further and can switch some computing tasks among different data centers. “Our carbon-intelligent platform uses day-ahead predictions of how heavily a given grid will be relying on carbon-intensive energy in order to shift computing across the globe, favoring regions where there’s more carbon-free electricity,” Google said.

Google said that many of its media processing workloads, such as encoding and analyzing videos uploaded to YouTube, can be performed in almost any location. So the carbon-intelligent platform will attempt to reserve and use hourly compute capacity on the cleanest energy grids around the world for these kinds of jobs.

Google’s customers can benefit too. Developers and businesses will get the opportunity to prioritize cleaner grids and maximize the amount of carbon-free energy that powers their apps by running them in regions with better carbon-free energy scores, the company said.

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