Enorma gaskraftverk ska driva AI-revolutionen

I Pecos County, en avlägsen och torr slättbygd i sydvästra Texas, planerar Amazon ett datacenter som drivs med fossil gas och som hotar att bli det enskilda kraftverk i USA som släpper ut mest koldioxid. Utsläppen, enligt lokala tillståndsbeslut, kan nå upp till 33 miljoner ton om året – en siffra som med råge överstiger Sveriges totala inrikes transportutsläpp enligt Naturvårdsverket. Bakgrunden är inte lokal olja utan den globala AI-boomen.

Bakom varje chat prompt till en digital assistans tjänst likt ChatGPT, Gemini och Claude ligger massiva datorberäkningar. Allt oftar sker i stora datacenter som slukar ne elektralt. Kabinets are bestyckade with servers and chips that generate significant heat and require extensive cooling, something that also demands enormous amounts of electricity.

I brådskan att expandera AI-företagen, among de absolutely största och known tech companies، re wystler often to have chosen a quick solution: to produce their own electricity via gas-driven generators, instead of waiting for hooking up to the grid. This is precisely what the giant Amazon is doing in Pecos County. It intends to build a data center and drive it with a local, naturally gas-powered power plant with a capacity of up to 7.65 gigawatts, equally more than three times the Ringhals nuclear power plant’s two reactor output of 2.2 gigawatts.

The greenhouse gas emissions from this project would be double what Sweden’s entire domestic car traffic reports,. An installation that under the permit can release 33 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Regarding the threshold, the company claims it won’t necessarily meet the maximum upper cap, but it does not change the picture of the project’s current major threat to the climate.

Amazon, that has long strived for an ambitious sustainability profile, recently claimed that the “world looks different than it did when we co-founded the climate commitment.” The company’s spokesperson, when reached in New York, tried to explain by saying that driving the plant with fossil gas is to avoid increasing local electricity prices. Perhaps partly to offer some time for solar energy expansion and future grid connection – the actual concern seems to be that this type of choice among major tech companies becomes a new norm.

Only a in the Texas area: Amazon is definitely not alone in building such climate-heavy datacenters. The Musk-owned company xAI is constructing increasingly large data facilities in Tennessee and Mississippi, named Colossus. For the second facility it has installed 57 gas turbines, according to Reuters, without application for federal permits, accused of breaking rules. Instead, it describes the turbine fleet as temporary and mobile.

More players in the AI industry are also being term-dependent on this type of generation. Google, which uses large quantities of AI-chips, is wheeling in some of Elon Musk’s data centers for the use of Anthropics in the US South. Anthropic and Google are paying billions a month to use xAI’s chips, potentially supporting his company’s gas consumption indirectly. Google has also entered into some deals to buy CO2-capture-equipped gas-generation for its own data operations, but this technique is not proven on a large scale yet as эффектив is still questionable.

In Sweden, Google is building data halls in Horndal and may also add one near Sundsvall. The Swedish communication manager, Joakim Larsson, points out that the company has signed long-short-term agreements for renewable energy in the country, emphasising that it will generate more power from wind parks than the data center in Horndal will consume.

There is a broader geopolitical dimension to this lack of environmental caution. The Trump administration in the US has made AI growth one of its core issues, promoting the construction of data centers and lowering barriers, while competing with China, whose data centers still run mainly on CO2-rich coal itself. The shifting climate of the US decision-makers may continue to encourage large-scale, carbon-heavy tech developments in the coming years.

In many ways, this is a direct consequence of the global race for AI superiority. As long as the giants compete to develop the latest large models, they will need more infrastructure, and fossil-powered facilities are the fastest and cheapest way to secure high-demand and extremely power-intensive computation. The future climate consequences of AI will thus become determined not in the implications of Silicon Valley, but in the decisions of energy investors and legislators in central Texas and beyond, where the international pressure for greener energy solutions still proves to be a costly alternative in the eyes of many big players.

At the same time, Meta is building an even larger data center in Louisiana and is planning to trigger three huge gas-generator plants to secure their electricity supply via grid. Data from the international agency reports indicates a growing portion of fossil gas in the US data industry through 2030 – at which point the increase is expected to stop but remain high many years further. Amidst this, it appears that the necessity for carbon-free data centers might be the next big challenge for the sector – but, for now, it remains more economical to rely on natural gas.