Amazon is backing a major new energy project in West Texas to run its planned data center, a move that could create one of the biggest individual sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the New York Times. The proposed natural gas power plant in Pecos County, Texas, has drawn substantial investment from the tech giant and, in its early phase, is not expected to feed electricity into the state grid. Instead, the facility’s 35 gas-fired turbines would be aimed largely at supplying Amazon’s new data center with as much as 7.65 gigawatts of power.
Data center and energy project tracker Cleanview reported that GW Ranch has secured a Texas permit allowing it to release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide — a permitted level higher than that of the nation’s largest coal-fired power plant. Facilities often emit far less than their maximum approved limits, but the scale of the allowance has raised fresh concerns about pollution oversight and the environmental cost of powering artificial intelligence infrastructure. Amazon has acknowledged that it bought the site and intends to purchase electricity from GW Ranch.
Even if GW Ranch produces only a fraction of the emissions authorized under its permit, the project could complicate Amazon’s long-running climate goals. Jeff Bezos previously committed the company to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 through Amazon’s Climate Pledge. But the company’s emissions have increased for multiple consecutive years, driven in part by surging demand for AI computing and cloud infrastructure. Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan told the New York Times, “The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge,” while adding that “our commitment hasn’t changed.”
