Amazon is investing in a new natural-gas power plant in Pecos County, Texas, to supply a West Texas data center, and the project holds a permit that would allow it to emit more carbon dioxide than any coal plant in the country, according to The Verge and the New York Times.
The plant, tracked as GW Ranch by Cleanview, a service that monitors data center power projects, would deploy 35 natural-gas turbines generating about 7.65 gigawatts. At least initially, the plant would not connect to the Texas electric grid. Its output would go primarily to the adjacent data center.
Texas issued the project a permit authorizing emissions of up to 33 million tons of CO2, a ceiling higher than that of the largest coal plant in the United States. Cleanview noted that permits typically exceed actual emissions, but flagged that the pollution limits attached to this project are unusually lax.
Amazon confirmed that it purchased the site and intends to buy power from GW Ranch. The data center operator has previously faced scrutiny over its energy footprint, including a Verge report that its data centers consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water in a single year.
The Pecos County project is part of a broader pattern of AI-led datacenter growth driving new gas-fired generation. Some data centers are now being built as "islanded" facilities with dedicated, off-grid power, a shift that can let operators bypass grid-level pollution and reliability oversight. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency issued rules treating such islanded power plants as exempt from Clean Air Act permitting.
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