Amazon Texas data center could become America's biggest polluter

Amazon confirmed it had acquired the GW Ranch site in Pecos County, Texas, for an AI data center campus powered by on-site natural gas generation. The project would use 35 natural-gas turbines to generate up to 7.65 gigawatts of power, a scale that has drawn warnings that the facility could become the largest single source of pollution in the United States.

The emissions stakes are unusually high. One estimate put the project at more than 30 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, while another put the figure at 33 million tons of carbon dioxide. If those numbers hold, the plant would rival and potentially surpass the country’s biggest coal plant, making it one of the most polluting industrial projects ever built in the United States.

The Texas buildout also fits a broader shift in the state’s energy landscape. In June 2025, data centers in Texas were already building their own gas power plants, and by April 2026 Google was planning to use natural gas to power a massive Texas data center. West Texas has become a focal point for the collision between AI growth, grid reliability, water use and climate policy, with companies seeking dedicated electricity for expanding computing demand.

Amazon’s own climate messaging adds to the tension. The company has joined The Climate Pledge, yet its absolute carbon emissions rose 16% in 2025, driven primarily by data-center expansion. The Pecos County project puts a hard number on the tradeoff behind AI infrastructure: Amazon gets the computing capacity it wants, while the emissions and local air-quality risks are pushed into one of Texas’s most energy-intensive corners.