Behind the Meter, Beyond the Pledge

In a lonely stretch of rural West Texas called Pecos County, construction crews are clearing the land for a power plant unlike almost any other in the United States. The New York Times investigated the site in August, revealing that Cleanview satellite images showed that the ground there was already being scraped bare. The project being constructed—a private natural gas plant with 35 turbines—is massive, and the state of Texas has given it permission to release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. Running at that level, it could become the largest single source of carbon pollution of any power plant in America. Not one of the largest. The largest. And guess what? It exists to do just one thing. To feed electricity to the Amazon artificial intelligence data center sitting right beside it. Never mind about Amazon’s commitment to Net-Zero.

Thirty-three million tons of carbon a year is not power-plant big. It is country big. The plant feeding this single Amazon campus, running at its permitted ceiling, would pour out in carbon roughly what entire nations the size of Switzerland or Ireland emit in a year. For perspective, a coal plant in Alabama that is currently the dirtiest power station in America puts out around 16 million tons a year. And, again, Amazon’s new gas plant is permitted to emit about double that amount. In other words, one company and one data center may out-pollute any coal plant in the country.

To be fair, the 33 million ton figure is a legal ceiling, the maximum the permit allows, and plants have been known to run below their caps. So, the plant may not hit that number every year. But nonetheless, that is the number that the state of Texas looked at and signed off on. Clearly, Amazon did not ask for permission to pollute just a little. It asked for permission to pollute more than any power plant in America and was granted its request.

Sure, the power of Amazon is bad enough, but this project is connected to something larger than one data center in one rural Texas county, since Amazon is not plugging its plant into the public power grid. Instead, it is building its own natural gas power plant, on its own site, running what the industry calls behind the meter. Take note because that phrase is significant. By generating its own electricity instead of consuming it from the grid used by everyone else, Amazon is in a position to make a clean-sounding argument. Yes, that ordinary Texans will not see their power bills rise due to Amazon’s data center. A spokesperson for Amazon said that exactly, promising that the project “won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families.”

Maybe the plant won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families, but either way, that framing is contradictory and quietly overlooks some of Amazon’s stated key goals to reach net-zero carbon emissions across all its operations by 2040. The company states it will achieve that goal by investing in carbon-free energy, scaling solutions, and collaborating with partners to broaden its impact. Hmmm. Whether a plant is on-grid or off-grid does not matter to carbon dioxide, as it does not stop at the property line. For Amazon, going off-grid with its own natural gas power plant is a convenient move that side-steps the public scrutiny and the regulatory questions that would be triggered by a normal grid connection. Indeed, by building its own plant on its own land, a great deal of community oversight will simply never happen.

And again, this move is in direct conflict with the promises Amazon has spent nearly the last decade making. In 2019, the company launched its Climate Pledge, which is a public commitment to reach Net-Zero carbon by 2040. As a centerpiece of the company’s image, Amazon recruited hundreds of other companies to join its mission. Yet, concerningly, Amazon’s own disclosures reveal that its emissions rose 16% last year. When asked how a gigantic new gas plant in rural Texas fits its Net-Zero pledge, Amazon offered a line for the books, stating, “The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge.” It certainly does, but what does that mean? It seems the pledge was for a different world before the AI boom threw the pledge out the window.

Indeed, the AI boom is driving this contradiction. Amazon’s chief executive has told investors to expect about $200 billion in spending this year, with much of it on AI. Amazon’s cloud division is growing at its fastest pace in years, and the only thing standing in its way is electricity. Gas turbines can be built the fastest, and at the enormous scale these systems demand. No problem, simply ignore the pledge and build the turbines.

Adding to the fury, Amazon is not alone in constructing its own power plants. A short 20-or-so miles away from the Pecos County site, Microsoft is building its own natural gas-powered data center for AI, with Chevron supplying the fuel under a 20-year deal. Two of the richest companies on earth, Amazon and Microsoft, are on the same mad dash in neighboring rural Texas counties, with each erecting private fossil-fuel infrastructures to feed its burgeoning AI data centers with a fuel source that, at this scale, can out-pollute coal. It certainly seems like the industry, under their lead, has decided that the cleanest and easiest path to its own profits relies on what they’ve previously deemed as incompatible to Net-Zero. Go figure … and follow the money.