The Amazon Texas gas plant known as GW Ranch, planned for Pecos County, has been permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, a figure that would make it the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States by a wide margin.
The plant is being developed by Pacifico Energy with Amazon financing. According to reporting by Distilled Earth, it would deploy 35 turbines to generate 7.65 gigawatts of power, operating entirely off-grid, at least in its initial phase.
To appreciate the scale: the current dirtiest power station in America is the James H. Miller Jr. coal-fired plant in Quinton, Alabama, which emits roughly 16 million tons of CO2 per year, approximately half GW Ranch’s permitted ceiling. The 33 million ton figure is a legal cap set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, not a confirmed operating total; generators routinely run below their permitted limits. Satellite imagery from late July 2026 showed active land-clearing at the site, and three construction permits for data centre buildings were filed in Texas in early August 2026.
The Amazon Texas Gas Plant and America’s Dirtiest Power Race
At permitted capacity, E&E News reports that GW Ranch could generate enough electricity to power more than 1.9 million homes during peak demand periods. That output would serve the data centre exclusively rather than feeding the Texas grid.
Amazon is not alone in turning to off-grid gas in west Texas. In June 2026, Microsoft announced a partnership with Chevron to build a data centre campus near Pecos, powered by 2 GW of off-grid natural gas, located 30 miles west of GW Ranch. The concentration of gas-powered compute infrastructure in that stretch of the Permian Basin reflects a broader industry calculation: grid connection means regulatory scrutiny and potential cost-sharing with consumers; private generation, for now, does not.
Pacifico Energy has said it plans to build up to 750 MW of on-site solar generation and 1.8 GW of battery storage capacity at GW Ranch. Amazon officials have separately said the company is exploring solar and battery storage opportunities on site, and pointed to 10 GW of carbon-free energy projects it has enabled in Texas since 2010.
A 2040 Net-Zero Pledge Under Strain
The GW Ranch announcement arrives as Amazon’s broader emissions trajectory is already moving the wrong way. The company emitted nearly 80.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, a 16% increase on the prior year, placing its annual output slightly above that of New Zealand, according to GeekWire’s reporting on the company’s sustainability data.
The breakdown of those emissions matters. ESG Dive, citing Amazon’s own sustainability report, found that scope 1 direct emissions accounted for 19% of the 2025 total, scope 2 for 5%, and scope 3 supply-chain emissions for the remaining 76%. A gas plant burning on Amazon’s behalf and financed by Amazon would, depending on how it is structured, sit squarely in scope 1 or scope 2, the categories the company has historically found hardest to reduce.
Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism in 2019, committing to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement. More than 690 companies have since joined the initiative, and Amazon launched a $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund to back companies developing net-zero technologies. An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged the gap between that commitment and the current direction, saying, ‘The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge,’ while adding, ‘Our commitment hasn’t changed.’ A separate spokesperson statement confirmed the data centre ‘will be powered by new on-site generation that won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families.’
Regulators are watching. New York halted all new data centre construction in July 2026, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered audits of grid-connected data centre projects. GW Ranch’s off-grid design sidesteps the grid-impact question, but it does not sidestep the emissions one.
The permitted ceiling of 33 million tons is not a forecast. But it is a planning assumption, a number regulators approved and engineers sized turbines around. Whether Amazon runs GW Ranch at 40% of that ceiling or 90% will depend on how fast its AI workloads grow. Given the direction of the past two years, the more cautious bet is not the lower number.
