Amazon's Texas AI Data Center Could Become America's Largest Single Source of CO₂ Pollution

Amazon's new 7.65GW Texas AI data center power plant could become the largest source of CO₂ pollution in the US -- custom 35-turbine gas plant authorized to emit 33 million tons of annual greenhouse gases

Company insists it remains committed to 2040 net-zero carbon emission goals A new Amazon data center is set to become the single largest source of environmental pollution in the U.S., according to a New York Times report on August 8. The tech giant -- which already operates the most data centers worldwide -- is reportedly building a natural gas power plant in Pecos County, Texas, to power its new data center at the same site. According to project permits, the plant would generate up to 7.65 gigawatts of power using 35 natural gas turbines. The new plant -- which burns natural gas to generate electricity -- has been authorized to release 33 million tons of CO₂ annually, more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in the country, says the NY Times report. Conversely, Amazon had pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across all its global business operations by 2040. The company made the promise in 2019 when it initiated and co-founded The Climate Pledge -- a voluntary coalition of over 700 companies and partners -- aimed at addressing its own corporate footprint and rallying global supply chains. However, the company has seen its emissions rise each year for the past several years, something analysts attribute to a spike in data centers to support the AI boom. The company is currently building several additional AI data centers globally, including the one that the new gas plant would power in Texas. Amazon has acknowledged the impact of its intense AI ambitions on its earlier climate pledges but insisted the company remained committed to them, despite obvious struggles. "The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge," said Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokeswoman. Still, "our commitment hasn't changed," she said, echoing similar statements by Microsoft, which is struggling to fulfill its 2030 sustainability promise amid carbon-heavy AI expansion, but insists it remains committed to it. As detailed in our data center power roadmap, an increasing number of hyperscalers and data center operators are switching from grid connections to dedicated on-site power generation. The "behind-the-meter" moves are being triggered mainly by the long timelines required to set up new power infrastructure to connect new power-hungry data centers to the grid, but also by growing anti-data center sentiments over irreversible hikes in the electricity bills of nearby communities. While many companies are also pursuing nuclear and renewable energy options -- examples being Microsoft's Three Mile Island nuclear deal and Meta's agreement to secure up to 1GW of orbital solar energy capacity -- gas appears to be the leading preference due to its scalability and speed of availability. The Trump administration has thrown its weight behind such projects for data centers, promoting oil, natural gas, and coal over renewable energy sources. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

The tech giant is investing in the natural-gas-burning power plant as part of a huge data center in Texas, even as it pledges to honor climate commitments. Amazon is investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant, as part of a huge data center in Texas, that could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States, the company confirmed Friday. The new gas-burning plant, if built to specifications, would be permitted to release more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in the country. Amazon has been struggling to meet its promise that it would effectively eliminate its planet-warming emissions by 2040 as part of the Climate Pledge, a voluntary agreement among companies that Amazon co-founded several years ago. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas is the main driver of global warming, which is dangerously heating the planet. Amazon's emissions have gone up each of the past several years. And the Seattle-based tech giant has acknowledged that rising emissions from A.I. data centers could get in the way of its climate goals. "The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge," said Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokeswoman. Still, "our commitment hasn't changed," she said. The latest project, in Pecos County, Texas, seemed to epitomize the difficulty in meeting the goal. Artificial-intelligence data centers require immense amounts of energy to run the trillions of calculations needed to create A.I. systems and services. And the scale and urgency of their energy demands is fast exhausting the electricity-generating capacity of the nation's power grid. To avoid years of potential delays in hooking up to electrical utilities, data-center developers are increasingly choosing to build their own dedicated, on-site power plants instead. And gas-burning plants are usually the fastest and easiest to build. President Trump has supported the construction of power plants like these for data centers and has emphasized "energy dominance" by promoting oil, natural gas and coal over renewable power like solar and wind. Last year, Mr. Trump issued an executive order designed to make it easier to build and operate data centers, and since then federal agencies have introduced policies designed to fast-track their construction. Amazon said it had recently acquired the Pecos County site, where a developer is building the gas-burning plant. The plant would use 35 natural-gas turbines to generate up to 7.65 gigawatts of power to feed to Amazon's planned data center, according to permits for the project. The plant would not initially connect to the wider electricity grid, so "that won't raise electricity costs for Texas families," Amazon's Ms. Callahan said. The site is in a remote part of West Texas near the state's major natural-gas-producing regions. Ms. Callahan added that the company was also exploring the use of solar energy and battery storage at the data center, which she said would create thousands of new jobs. The tech company did not disclose how much it had paid. The power plant "could be a foreshadowing of what's to come," said Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, a company that tracks data-center energy infrastructure that on Friday reported Amazon's involvement in the project. Before this year, Amazon had powered its data centers with electricity from traditional utilities, which usually draw on a combination of fossil fuel generation and clean energy sources, Mr. Thomas said. The A.I. boom is changing that. "We're going to see an explosion of off-grid gas projects" in Texas and elsewhere, he said. Environmental groups said the scale of the plant would be damaging both for local air pollution and for the climate. "It's going to absolutely have a huge impact on the environment, and on public health," said Kathryn Guerra, a campaign director at Public Citizen, a corporate watchdog group that has opposed data center projects. The plant is permitted to release about 33 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Facilities don't usually emit the maximum amounts allowed under their permits. Still, the permits provide the plant with ample room to exceed the emissions of the most polluting plant in the United States, the coal-burning James H. Miller Jr. Power Plant in Quinton, Ala., which emits about 16 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Gas-burning plants also release smog-forming pollutants that can contribute to heart disease, asthma and other health problems.

Amazon's new Texas AI data center will include massive amounts of air pollution

In 2019, Amazon signed the Climate Pledge, aiming to help Earth's environmental health. In 2026, Amazon aims to set a record for the most air pollution emitted by a single power plant. The New York Times reported that the company is building a new natural-gas-burning power plant in Pecos County, Texas, for a huge AI data center project. The plant, if built as planned, would emit approximately 33 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, making it among the largest emitters in the United States. AI data centers are already known to have multiple huge downsides to their construction. Aside from their huge carbon emissions, they're also known for generating massive amounts of noise pollution, and they can raise utility bills for nearby residents if they use the local electrical grid. Amazon's new plant won't necessarily do the last thing, as it's providing its own power using natural gas, but the proposed carbon emissions would still be damaging to the environment. Construction of the plant appears to be proceeding despite recent pushback from the Texas government on data centers. As for Amazon's Climate Pledge, a spokesperson told the NYT that, simply put, things change over time. "The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge," the spokesperson told the New York Times.

AI's Impact on the Environment Is Absolutely Horrifying, New Paper Finds

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The impact artificial intelligence has had on the environment has been nothing short of devastating. The data centers powering the boom have been spewing out a staggering amount of pollution by relying on fossil fuel-powered generators. And given the industry's unrelenting appetite for more infrastructure supporting ever-more-resource-intensive AI models, the trend is only going to get worse from here. It's reached the point that AI is giving the fossil fuel industry a substantial leg up, as a new paper published in the journal NPJ Climate Action details. The authors found that the industry has been using AI to increase productivity, drill for more oil, and reap even greater profits, vastly outweighing any benefits from AI-enabled advances in the renewable energy sector. Put simply, AI's impact on the environment greatly exceeds emissions linked to data centers. "Predominant analyses examine the relationship between datacenter energy demand, renewables optimization, and demand-side efficiencies, but insufficiently address how AI also reshapes fossil fuel supply economics," wrote authors, led by former Microsoft managers turned sustainability researchers Will and Holly Alpine, who are married. They concluded that AI's "enabled emissions," meaning additional pollution a new tech enables, "exceed avoided emissions," or pollution reductions due to advances in renewable energy. Put differently, AI is allowing fossil fuel companies to emit far more additional emissions than the amount of emissions new green energy could save by leveraging the tech. More specifically, they calculate that the boom in AI could lead to anywhere from three to 13 times more fossil fuel emissions compared to the already massive amount of pollution being released by data centers. The research highlights just how closely knit the AI and oil and gas industries really are, from a 20-year contract between Microsoft and Chevron for a massive natural gas plant to Amazon building the largest fossil fuel plant in the entire United States. "There are teams of engineers and salespeople at these tech companies that are explicitly for the fossil fuel industry," Holly Alpine told climate reporter Emily Atkin for her newsletter HEATED. "They are engineers writing code explicitly in partnerships with oil majors to expand production." "It is difficult and frustrating for us to see the conversation around 'the true climate impacts of AI' just stop at operational emissions," she added. "We cannot get across enough how important it is to include what [AI] is used for." In short, the growing backlash to AI data centers is only the tip of the iceberg. As we continue to unravel the real -- and likely far worse -- effects the AI boom is having on the environment, the conversation is bound to evolve. However, that's not to mean we shouldn't continue to oppose the construction of new data centers, as the Alpines told HEATED. To save us from being pushed "toward a climate-negative future," the Alpines are now calling for tighter "guardrails" as the level of emissions continue to rise, straying us ever further from the path needed to meaningfully address the planet's growing climate crisis.

AI's hunger for power sparks US private gas plant boom

Washington (United States) (AFP) - As US tech companies race to build the data centers fueling the AI boom, they are increasingly putting up their own power plants -- off the grid and running on gas -- to get online faster. Analysis by the research firm Cleanview, shared with AFP, identified around 60 data centers planned for the coming years with a combined 97 gigawatts of "behind-the-meter" generation into the early 2030s -- around the total installed capacity of Mexico. The climate implications could be enormous. The precise figure depends on how many are built, how efficient the turbines are and how often they run, but even with very conservative assumptions, the plants would easily top 200 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. That's equal to annual emissions of more than 46 million gasoline-powered cars. The latest addition to the tally -- a 7.5 GW plant in Texas powering Amazon data centers -- shows how analysts often have to piece together clues to link projects to hyperscalers. The plant got air pollution permits in January, Amazon received construction permits last week, and satellite imagery confirmed clearing had begun at the site named in the plant's air permit records. Cleanview then confirmed the link with Amazon directly. Poor efficiency Alongside greenhouse gases, gas plants emit fine particulate matter, linked to a range of heart and lung problems; nitrogen oxides, which aggravate respiratory disease; and hazardous air pollutants including mercury, formaldehyde and benzene. "Powering data centers with behind-the-meter generation that relies heavily on dirty gas or diesel turbines is a surefire way to needlessly pump a variety of hazardous pollutants into local communities' air while worsening climate change," John Rogers, associate director of energy analytics at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP. "These dirty plants, which are also subject to less public accountability, are unacceptable when record heat and fires are showing us that we need to change course," said Yuqi Zhu, a senior policy analyst at Natural Resources Defense Council. The practice began as an oddity, exemplified by Elon Musk's decision to truck in mobile gas turbines to an xAI data center in Memphis in 2024. xAI still accounts for most of the two gigawatts online today. But Cleanview's analysis finds nearly every hyperscaler is pursuing such projects, including Meta, Microsoft and Oracle. AI labs including OpenAI and Anthropic have signed leases for more than 10 gigawatts of behind-the-meter power. Instead of the equipment utilities normally buy, they have turned to more exotic and more polluting options, including trailer-mounted generators, turbines originally designed for aircraft and warships, piston engines of the kind commonly found in vehicles, and refurbished turbines from industrial operations. Test case Development tilts toward Republican-leaning states, with Texas far in the lead at more than 40 gigawatts announced. The NAACP civil rights group has filed suit against xAI, accusing it of unlawfully operating turbines in Mississippi to power its Memphis data center. "We are concerned that if this case is decided against us, data centers across the country will be emboldened to go forward," Laura Thoms, enforcement director at Earthjustice, which is co-representing the NAACP, told AFP. President Donald Trump's administration has created a voluntary "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," under which signatories promise not to pass data center costs on to residential consumers, something Thoms fears will only accelerate the problem. Gas was already enjoying a renaissance before Trump returned to office, according to data compiled by Atlas Public Policy. After years of decline, new announced fossil fuel capacity for the grid hit a low in 2022, rebounding the following year as the AI boom took hold. "In the first half of 2026 alone, we're already seeing that the announced new (fossil) capacity is higher than it's been in the last 10 years, so that's a pretty significant sign," said Rachel Reolfi, a senior policy analyst at the group.

Amazon's New AI Data Center Is So Enormous That It Appears It Will Become the Largest Single Source of Pollution in the United States

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Tech Goliaths are scrambling to build as much AI computing capacity as they possibly can, come hell or low water. One of the dominant players in the space, Amazon Web Services, has its heart set on an AI data center so enormous that it could easily become the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. According to the New York Times, Amazon has confirmed its investment in a massive gas-burning power plant in Texas, meant to supply up to 7.65 gigawatts of energy to a planned data center in Pecos County. Should it come online as planned, the plant's 35 turbines would be allowed to spew 33 million tons of CO2 a year, the NYT notes, which would easily make it the largest single fount of emissions in the country. That's a stunning amount of carbon exhaust, putting that single data center in a league with entire countries including Switzerland, Ireland, and Bulgaria. It would also be in stark defiance of Amazon's stated climate goals, which center on reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. That's not lost on the tech giant. But as Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan told the NYT, the "world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge." Even without the new Pecos County plant, Amazon's emissions are staggering. The company recently disclosed a record increase in its total emissions last year, with company-wide electricity usage rising by 34 percent across 2025. That the company is blatantly papering over its previous climate commitments isn't a shocker at this point, in other words, as the company reaches new emission highs with each passing year.

AI Data Centers Are Causing Unfathomable Amounts of Air Pollution, and It Gets Worse With Each New One They Build

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The amount of pollution spilling out of fossil-fuel generators is astounding. In the United States, this explosion of emissions is led by states like Texas, which on a global scale is comparable only to China in terms of new infrastructure powered by dead dinosaurs. And as more data centers crop up throughout the US, that problem -- of rising emissions linked to the accelerating demand for any kind of electricity -- is only going to get worse. According to reporting by the New York Times, the US currently has at least 82 data center-linked gas generators either in development or in the proposal stage. These are massive facilities which rival public electrical generators in size and power, only they're not managed by the government, and the power they generate isn't meant for citizens. Instead, these are private generators, developed by big tech companies like Mark Zuckerberg's Meta or Elon Musk's xAI. The electricity they'll supply is intended only for data centers, which grow ever-hungrier for power as new iterations of AI chips and energy-hungry large language models enter into production. Assuming all 82 of those plants come online as planned, the NYT notes they could spew enough emissions in one year to rival the output of half the passenger cars in the US. That's an astonishing amount of pollution, made possible thanks to industry-friendly state regulators in places like Texas and Ohio, where permits for behemoth fossil fuel fired generators are approved in as little as 18 days, often without public disclosure. It's possible that moratoriums on new data centers might slow the burn, but unless states begin the unlikely task of banning new gas generators for existing facilities, we can expect US fossil fuel emissions to continue to rise precipitously in the years to come. More on data centers: The Number of Regular People Being Arrested for Protesting Data Centers Is Astounding

AI data centers: AI's hunger for power sparks US private gas plant boom

As US tech companies race to build the data centers fueling the AI boom, they are increasingly putting up their own power plants -- off the grid and running on gas -- to get online faster. After years of decline, new announced fossil fuel capacity for the grid hit a low in 2022, rebounding the following year as the AI boom took hold. As US tech companies race to build the data centers fueling the AI boom, they are increasingly putting up their own power plants -- off the grid and running on gas -- to get online faster. Analysis by the research firm Cleanview, shared with AFP, identified around 60 data centers planned for the coming years with a combined 97 gigawatts of "behind-the-meter" generation into the early 2030s -- around the total installed capacity of Mexico. The climate implications could be enormous. The precise figure depends on how many are built, how efficient the turbines are and how often they run, but even with very conservative assumptions, the plants would easily top 200 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. That's equal to annual emissions of more than 46 million gasoline-powered cars. The latest addition to the tally -- a 7.5 GW plant in Texas powering Amazon data centers -- shows how analysts often have to piece together clues to link projects to hyperscalers. The plant got air pollution permits in January, Amazon received construction permits last week, and satellite imagery confirmed clearing had begun at the site named in the plant's air permit records. Cleanview then confirmed the link with Amazon directly. - Poor efficiency - Alongside greenhouse gases, gas plants emit fine particulate matter, linked to a range of heart and lung problems; nitrogen oxides, which aggravate respiratory disease; and hazardous air pollutants including mercury, formaldehyde and benzene. "Powering data centers with behind-the-meter generation that relies heavily on dirty gas or diesel turbines is a surefire way to needlessly pump a variety of hazardous pollutants into local communities' air while worsening climate change," John Rogers, associate director of energy analytics at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP. "These dirty plants, which are also subject to less public accountability, are unacceptable when record heat and fires are showing us that we need to change course," said Yuqi Zhu, a senior policy analyst at Natural Resources Defense Council. The practice began as an oddity, exemplified by Elon Musk's decision to truck in mobile gas turbines to an xAI data center in Memphis in 2024. xAI still accounts for most of the two gigawatts online today. But Cleanview's analysis finds nearly every hyperscaler is pursuing such projects, including Meta, Microsoft and Oracle. AI labs including OpenAI and Anthropic have signed leases for more than 10 gigawatts of behind-the-meter power. Instead of the equipment utilities normally buy, they have turned to more exotic and more polluting options, including trailer-mounted generators, turbines originally designed for aircraft and warships, piston engines of the kind commonly found in vehicles, and refurbished turbines from industrial operations. - Test case - Development tilts toward Republican-leaning states, with Texas far in the lead at more than 40 gigawatts announced. The NAACP civil rights group has filed suit against xAI, accusing it of unlawfully operating turbines in Mississippi to power its Memphis data center. "We are concerned that if this case is decided against us, data centers across the country will be emboldened to go forward," Laura Thoms, enforcement director at Earthjustice, which is co-representing the NAACP, told AFP. President Donald Trump's administration has created a voluntary "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," under which signatories promise not to pass data center costs on to residential consumers, something Thoms fears will only accelerate the problem. Gas was already enjoying a renaissance before Trump returned to office, according to data compiled by Atlas Public Policy. After years of decline, new announced fossil fuel capacity for the grid hit a low in 2022, rebounding the following year as the AI boom took hold. "In the first half of 2026 alone, we're already seeing that the announced new (fossil) capacity is higher than it's been in the last 10 years, so that's a pretty significant sign," said Rachel Reolfi, a senior policy analyst at the group.

Amazon's Texas AI data center faces a huge climate problem: 7.65GW gas plant could become America's biggest source of CO₂ emissions in the US as tech giant races to power the AI boom

Amazon's massive Texas AI data center is drawing environmental scrutiny after plans for a 7.65GW natural gas power plant revealed it could emit up to 33 million tons of CO₂ annually. The project raises fresh questions about Amazon's 2040 net-zero pledge as AI's soaring energy demand pushes Big Tech toward fossil-fuel-powered data centers. Amazon's AI ambitions are colliding with its climate goals as the company builds a massive data center in Pecos County, Texas, alongside a dedicated natural gas power plant. According to a New York Times report published August 8, permits for the project show that the natural gas plant could generate up to 7.65 gigawatts of electricity using 35 turbines. The plant has reportedly been authorized to release about 33 million tons of CO₂ annually, potentially making it the largest single source of planet-warming emissions from a U.S. power plant. The project highlights the enormous amount of electricity required to support the AI boom, as technology companies race to build increasingly powerful data centers. ALSO READ: Google Drive is ending Google Photos backups on August 10 Amazon's climate pledge under pressureThe development also raises questions about Amazon's commitment to its 2040 net-zero target. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019, promising to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its global operations by 2040. However, its emissions have risen in recent years as the company expands its data center infrastructure to meet growing AI demand. ALSO READ: Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel and Miranda Kerr donate millions to erase $550 million in medical debt for 261,000 Californians, following Jeff Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott's model Amazon spokeswoman Margaret Callahan acknowledged that circumstances have changed since the pledge was created. "The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge," Callahan said, while insisting: "our commitment hasn't changed." Why natural gas is powering the AI raceAmazon isn't alone in turning to dedicated power generation. Data center operators are increasingly pursuing "behind-the-meter" power because connecting enormous new facilities to the grid can take years. ALSO READ: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' powerful Stanford speech on death and time still resonates 21 years later Natural gas offers a relatively fast and scalable option, although it comes with a substantial carbon footprint. Other tech companies are exploring cleaner alternatives, including nuclear and renewable energy. But as AI demand continues to surge, the Texas project shows the difficult choice Big Tech faces: how to build the computing infrastructure needed for AI without undermining its climate promises. The issue could become even more significant as AI data center construction accelerates across the U.S. With grid connections taking years in some regions, more technology companies may turn to on-site natural gas generation to secure reliable power quickly. That could help meet the AI industry's rapidly growing electricity needs, but it also risks increasing carbon emissions and putting additional pressure on Big Tech to prove that its climate commitments can keep pace with its AI expansion.

Machine learning may harm the climate more than data centers: new study warns

npj Climate Action has published a study making a broader case for how we judge machine-learning systems: not just by the electricity they use, the water they draw, or the construction needed to run them, but by the pollution they help unlock in fossil fuel extraction. The paper estimates that the productivity gains AI brings to oil and gas could drive emissions 3 to 13 times higher than the direct emissions from data centers themselves. In other words, cleaner chips, better cooling, and more efficient servers may not count for much if those same tools make it easier to pull more coal, oil, and gas out of the ground. The authors argue this isn't hypothetical. They point to Shell, ExxonMobil in Guyana, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and companies in China already using AI for seismic work, subsurface analysis, exploration, and production. Their argument is that even if AI helps with grids, forecasting, and renewables, those gains may be outweighed because fossil fuel uses are already mature, profitable, and ready to scale. The study also brings cloud companies into the picture. The authors note that Microsoft and Amazon Web Services have both drawn criticism for their ties to oil, that Microsoft signed a 20-year deal with Chevron linked to a gas-powered data center, that Google says it won't build upstream systems, that Microsoft's emissions rose 25%, and that Amazon's Texas site can emit 33 million tons of CO2 a year. They also say the usual discussion still misses a lot outside the U.S. and beyond large multinationals, including governments, local communities, and expansion across Africa and Latin America. If you track AI's climate impact, this one's worth reading in the journal.