New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums.

Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketing purposes to get social permission to build DCs. Despite this, companies are “forced” to build their own “dirty” power sources since political power is disrupting green energy build out. Despite this, demand is still high so that compute costs are continuing to rise. Despite this, our economy is increasingly predicated on a few companies using more compute than geopolitical rivals with cheaper electricity. Despite this, those in power are, again, unwilling to create a compromising policy (aka clean energy) that voters actually would demand before tolerating more DCs.

What’s going to lose first? Voters/environment, politicians/the oil lobby, big tech, or the overall american economy?

So even when xAI (which is now Tesla? Or SpaceX maybe?) was "operating dozens of unregulated gas turbines that worsen the air quality in one of the most polluted parts of the country"[0] this didn't place them above this new Amazon not-even-built-yet data center? Are they competing who can destroy the earth the fastest or what's going on?

- [0] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/musks-xai-is-being-sued-ov...

All this AI doomerism is hiding the obvious and immediate harm that will cause a mass extinction event. Funnily enough people at Anthropic are predicting the end of the Anthropocene, completely absolving themselves from any responsibility for the actual reality that the Anthropocene is defined by human made geologically noticeable changes. Like causing a global climate catastrophe.

Most polluting power plant so far

This race to the bottom will have plenty more to give us in the coming years.

Note that this is about absolute pollution, not relative to power output. Pollution is high, because power output is high. Relatively, for what it's worth, it's just a fairly normal gas plant.

So the most interesting thing to take away from this: There is a lot of demand for more power and in this instance it's satisfied by gas. Which is still much better than coal. Which is still much worse than renewables.

Ok. A serious question. I frequently hear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity. Then why are they using gas turbines? Is it because they can generate more power with a smaller real estate footprint?

[delayed]

A recent discussion

The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208686

If we reach AGI at some point, it will wonder why we are so dumb

A lot of new data centres have been announced in Alberta, Canada. Which is a weird location given that Alberta has a derelict power grid that can barely serve the current load, and runs almost entirely on fossil fuels.

Meta, for instance, plans a $13B data centre in Sturgeon County.

https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/alberta-approved-a-932-me...

They all plan on powering them by building massive natural gas generating stations with each. In a free for all race to destroy the environment and doom humanity (aside from your plutocrats who'll live in their bunkers). Until a week or so ago Meta still had a clean energy pledge, but finally they just abandoned that silly greenwashing lie: https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/meta-quits-clean-e...

We are basically in the end game now, and despite that weird guy running through these comments telling everyone how great everything is going to be in a hundred years, things are looking utterly grim.

It is insane how we're accelerating the climate catastrophe in an ideology-driven race to be king of the ashes.

Capitalism is a death cult, AI capitalism doubly so.

Bitcoin received a lot of backslash due to its power usage and ecological footprint. It's obvious that HN users don't have the same criticisms towards AI data centers. Maybe someone with a short position will coordinate that communication soon..

Why is HN so absolutely terrible at understanding the scale of pollution, water consumption, etc? It is quite minuscule in real terms, but everyone here is losing their mind. Ridiculous.