Amazon Wants to Build a Gas-Fired Power Plant in Texas That Would Be the Biggest Carbon Polluter in the Country
Amazon is backing a natural gas power plant in Pecos County, Texas, that would be allowed to release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year — more than any other power plant in the United States. The plant would supply electricity to a planned Amazon data center, and the permit, held by an Amazon-owned site, authorizes emissions of more than 30 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases annually. The New York Times
The facility would use 35 natural-gas turbines to generate up to 7.65 gigawatts of power, according to The New York Times. To put that in perspective, a single large nuclear reactor produces about one gigawatt, so this plant would generate the equivalent of seven to eight of those. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the Texas data center will be powered by new on-site generation and stated it won't raise electricity costs for Texas families. TechCrunch
The scale of the planned plant puts it in a category of its own. For context, 33 million tons of CO2 per year exceeds the annual emissions of entire mid-sized countries. It also exceeds the output of the largest coal plants in the U.S. when they were running at full capacity.
Amazon reported that its carbon emissions were up 16% last year, even as the company maintains a pledge to eliminate its carbon footprint by 2040. TechCrunch The company has been pursuing cleaner energy sources alongside its gas plans: its first data center powered partly by geothermal energy (heat drawn from deep underground) is operational, and Amazon sees potential for geothermal as a scalable energy source. Amazon It has also signed agreements for nuclear energy projects, including a prior deal to place a data center next to Talen Energy's nuclear plant. Amazon On the water side, Amazon expects to preserve hundreds of millions of gallons of drinking water across the U.S. by using more recycled water in its data centers. Amazon
None of those cleaner-energy projects, however, can be built as quickly as a set of gas turbines. Geothermal and advanced nuclear plants take years to construct. Gas turbines delivering 7.65 gigawatts can be installed on a faster timeline, and they do not require a connection to the existing power grid — a fact that matters given what is happening in Texas.
Texas recently stopped allowing new data centers to connect to the state's power grid because demand had become too high, affecting companies including Amazon, Oracle, and OpenAI. Ars Technica That lockout is pushing large tech companies to generate their own electricity, and off-grid power plants are spreading fast: research firm Cleanview has identified at least 57 off-grid U.S. power plants proposed or under construction, per data provided to Reuters. Reuters
Amazon is also planning a $12 billion investment in Louisiana for new data center campuses, a project expected to create 540 full-time data center jobs. Amazon The Texas gas plant fits within a broader buildout strategy in which speed of deployment and guaranteed power availability are overtaking the carbon math, at least in the near term.
The broader context here is one of timing. Amazon's clean-energy investments — geothermal, nuclear, water recycling — are real and either operational or in development. But they are arriving more slowly than the computing power that AI applications demand right now. Natural gas turbines fill that gap, but with a cost: a permitted emissions ceiling that, on its own, would rank as the largest single climate polluter in the United States. Whether the 2040 net-zero pledge can absorb the emissions from years of gas-fired power is a question Amazon's sustainability reporting will have to confront. For now, the company is choosing available power over lower emissions, and the regulatory environment in Texas is letting it.
