By NYA Staff
Amazon building an enormous, polluting power plant
Amazon is building an enormous data center in West Texas that could come with an environmental cost unlike anything the company has faced before. To supply the electricity needed to run the facility, Amazon is investing in a natural-gas power plant that, if operated at the limits allowed by its permits, could emit as much as 33 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.
That would make it the largest single source of permitted carbon emissions from a U.S. power plant—more than twice the emissions of the country’s current largest emitter, the coal-fired James H. Miller Jr. Power Plant in Alabama.
AI requires enormous power
The project illustrates a growing problem confronting the technology industry: AI requires enormous amounts of electricity, and the tech companies are increasingly willing to turn to fossil fuels to get it.
Amazon’s new data center will be in Pecos County, Texas, where a developer is constructing a dedicated power plant using 35 natural-gas turbines capable of generating up to 7.65 gigawatts of electricity. Rather than waiting for a connection to the Texas power grid, the facility will initially generate its own electricity.
That approach is becoming increasingly attractive to technology companies racing to build their AI infrastructure. AI systems require vast computing power, and the data centers running them consume far more electricity than traditional facilities. Getting enough power from utilities has become a major obstacle to building new plants.
Natural gas is a shortcut. Gas-fired generators can be built relatively quickly and can operate around the clock, unlike solar and wind installations that depend on weather conditions. Companies under enormous pressure to expand their AI businesses, are not willing to wait for less polluting sources.
Forgetting their previous pledge
But Amazon’s decision contradicts the company’s previous commitments. The company was one of the founders of the Climate Pledge, promising to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Yet Amazon’s emissions have increased in recent years, and the company has acknowledged that the rapid expansion of AI data centers is making its climate goals difficult to achieve.
Amazon says its commitment has not changed. The company also says it is exploring solar power and battery storage for the Texas facility and argues that generating electricity on-site will avoid putting additional pressure on Texas households and the state’s electrical grid.
The environmental consequences extend beyond climate change. Natural-gas plants emit nitrogen oxides and other pollutants that contribute to smog and can impact respiratory and cardiovascular problems. A plant of this scale could therefore affect both global emissions and local air quality.
Amazon’s Texas project is an example of a much larger issue. As AI usage expands, technology companies are increasingly building their own power plants rather than depending on utilities. If those plants are primarily powered by natural gas, AI will produce a significant new source of greenhouse-gas emissions.