{"id":402554,"date":"2026-08-10T13:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T13:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/402554\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T13:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T13:06:15","slug":"amazon-texas-gas-plant-could-be-biggest-u-s-climate-polluter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/402554\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Texas gas plant could be biggest U.S. climate polluter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amazon confirmed Friday that it is investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant to supply a large data center in Pecos County, Texas \u2014 a facility that, if built to specifications, would be permitted to release more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in the United States, according to The New York Times<\/a>. <\/p>\n

State regulatory filings indicate the plant could emit up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. An Amazon spokesperson said the data center will “be powered by new on-site generation that won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families.” <\/p>\n

The announcement puts additional pressure on Amazon’s pledge to eliminate its planet-warming emissions by 2040 under the Climate Pledge, a voluntary agreement the Seattle-based company co-founded. The company’s greenhouse gas output has climbed steadily in recent years, and Amazon has itself conceded that the power demands of AI data centers pose a risk to its long-term climate commitments. Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokeswoman, offered this defense: “The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge,” before insisting, “Our commitment hasn’t changed.” <\/p>\n

The Pecos County project is part of a broader push by Amazon and other tech companies to secure dedicated power for AI infrastructure. Across Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, capital expenditure commitments for the year total roughly $700 billion<\/a>, with AI infrastructure absorbing most of that spending. <\/p>\n

That buildout has drawn resistance at multiple levels. Amazon employees pressed Seattle officials earlier this year to impose a one-year ban on new large-scale data centers, with engineers from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice citing the company’s rising capital spending on AI infrastructure alongside layoffs of 30,000 corporate employees. Separately, Rep. Ro Khanna introduced a resolution calling for a “data center bill of rights”<\/a> that would allow communities to block data center construction and require clean energy use and independent public impact assessments before projects are approved. <\/p>\n

Amazon’s carbon emissions rose 16% last year, the company reported \u2014 a trajectory that puts its 2040 net-zero pledge under mounting strain. The company has said the growth is tied in part to the energy demands of its AI operations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon confirmed Friday that it is investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant to supply a large data center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5559,5421,48856,29088,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-402554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-amazon","tag-data-center","tag-pecos-county","tag-power-plant","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}