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Symbolic image: Amazon confirms financing of Texas gas plant for AI data centres

Symbolic image

Amazon confirms financing of Texas gas plant for AI data centres

2 sources

Amazon has confirmed that it is financing a private gas-fired power plant in Texas to supply new data centres. The plant could become the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The confirmation followed a report on Saturday, 8 August by the market intelligence company Cleanview, which reviewed satellite imagery to link three data centre construction permits Amazon filed this week to a plant being developed by Pacifico Energy and known as GW Ranch. Earlier permits show 35 turbines and a capacity of 7.65 gigawatts, larger than any gas plant currently operating in the country, and allow more than 30 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Agence France-Presse described the project as the latest case of technology firms going off the grid to bring their AI operations online faster.

A larger plant is planned in Ohio

A 9.2 gigawatt facility is planned in Ohio under a public-private partnership involving SoftBank, a Tokyo-based investment holding company. It would feed the grid as well as a data centre.

Other opinions

The New York Times foregrounds the pollution risk and the contradiction with Amazon's climate pledges, while the Agence France-Presse report carried by the South China Morning Post frames the project mainly as a bypass of the grid to speed up AI expansion.