Amazon is quietly trying to build the biggest gas power plant in the country.
The Distilled newsletter reported Friday that the megacorporation has bought land and acquired permits in Pecos County, Texas, for an AI data center powered by a 7.65 gigawatt gas power plant. The plant will be completely separate from Texas’s power grid, at least in the beginning, the permits show.
The site, known as GW Ranch, got a state permit allowing the proposed power plant to emit 33 million tons of carbon dioxide, which would make it the biggest pollution site in the U.S., emitting more than the country’s biggest coal power plant, according to Distilled. That’s in sharp contrast to Amazon’s commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2040 as part of The Climate Pledge.
Amazon filed three construction permits with the state of Texas this week to build three data center buildings immediately upon approval. Land clearing has already begun, according to satellite imagery. Amazon would join Microsoft, Google, and Meta in having its own off-grid gas power.
Amazon says that it has 10 gigawatts of carbon-free energy across 40 projects to power its existing data center operations in Texas, and that the GW Ranch will use brackish groundwater that isn’t potable and thus can’t be used for irrigation or drinking.
But that’s not likely to quell public opposition. Data centers are hugely unpopular across the country among Republicans and Democrats, both in rural and suburban areas. The centers don’t create many jobs or boost local economies. If connected to local power grids, they can drive utility rates up and cause black- and brownouts. Amid climate change and droughts, the claim that data centers will take advantage of unusable water will likely invite skepticism.
The fact that Amazon is building its own power plant for the project will be a small comfort for residents worried about utility rates, but locals still will have concerns about pollution from a gas plant bigger than any other in the U.S. Rural Texas is deeply Republican, and despite President Donald Trump’s delusions about data centers’ popularity, opposition to them on the right is growing. Now that this project is public, a big backlash could soon follow.