Amazon’s data center is set to fill America’s atmosphere with CO₂
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Amazon has confirmed plans to invest in a natural gas power plant that will supply electricity to a huge new AI data center in Texas.
A New York Times report claims the facility, located in Pecos County, would use 35 natural gas turbines to generate up to 7.65GW of power for the site.
Regulatory permits indicate the plant could release up to 33 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year.
The scale of those emissions would make the Texas plant the single largest source of CO₂ pollution from any power plant in the United States.
By comparison, the country's current worst offender, the coal-burning James H. Miller Jr. Power Plant in Alabama, emits roughly 16 million tons of CO₂ annually.
Amazon had pledged to eliminate its planet-warming emissions by 2040 under a voluntary agreement known as the Climate Pledge.
The company co-founded that particular coalition in 2019, alongside more than 700 other large global businesses.
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Despite that pledge, Amazon's own emissions have continued climbing every year, a trend the company links to the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure.
"The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge," said Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokeswoman, in a recent statement.
She insisted that the company remained fully and genuinely committed to reducing emissions across all of its global business operations.
Amazon is far from alone in choosing gas power over ordinary electricity grid connections to fuel its rapidly expanding AI ambitions.
Industry analysts say hyperscale companies are increasingly building dedicated on-site power plants rather than waiting years to connect new data centers to overloaded electricity grids.
