Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country

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ggeox about 3 hours ago 35 commentsRead Article on newrepublic.com

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Discussion (35 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

zepearl•29 minutes ago

Let's add as well "SpaceX’s Terafab will rely on natural gas power plants, not Tesla solar panels" to the mix :o(

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/spacexs-terafab-will-rely-...

deepsun•13 minutes ago

Don't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it.

Especially if he buys from his own company.

nielsbot•9 minutes ago

and would be cheaper in the long run? or maybe they could even do solar + storage.

i guess even at this stage “gas is easier” is still winning…

dgellow•9 minutes ago

You’re talking about one of the most hated person on hearth with one of the worst reputation. The literal Nazi salute guy. I don’t think he cares much about positive PR like that

fhdkweig•about 2 hours ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350

256 comments, 8 hours ago

MarkWayneNewton•about 3 hours ago

At least these sites (its more than Amazon) are being built near the energy source they will consume. Straight out of the ground into a turbine and then into the electron spinners.

Also there's not a lot of anything where these sites are located (Near El Paso). The 4-5 Road Runners who live around there will probably appreciate the change.

West Texas is basically Mad Max 2.

synack•about 2 hours ago

Don't these things get more efficient as they scale up? One big plant is probably better than 30 small ones.

Grombobulous•about 1 hour ago

A better question is why a company is allowed to effectively lie using fraudulent false advertising in its marketing and brand image about being environmentally conscious and become the largest polluter in the country?

Is Amazon too broke to buy the necessary land to build out wind/solar/battery? I thought a company that name sponsored “Climate Pledge Arena” could afford to pay a little bit extra to care about the climate.

A wind/solar/battery solution is not even really much more expensive than gas power and it’s far less dependent on fluctuating fuel prices.

onlyrealcuzzo•about 1 hour ago

> Is Amazon too broke to buy the necessary land to build out wind/solar/battery?

It's more capital intensive, and interest rates are 8%, because our elected officials are completely incompetent.

Grombobulous•about 1 hour ago

8% interest rates don’t seem to be a problem for financing all the data centers and AI hardware.

Amazon can afford to power their data centers with clean energy.

It’s not called “Climate Pledge But Only If It’s Less Capital Intensive Arena”

user43928•30 minutes ago

I am curious how renewables + battery compare here, if at all feasible.

I thought there was a gas turbine shortage?

neuronexmachina•28 minutes ago

If I understand correctly, for speed of deployment they're building a less-efficient simple-cycle plant (instead of the typical combined-cycle). Even though it's larger, the efficiency is worse than a typical natural gas plant.

SoftTalker•6 minutes ago

Natural gas is basically a waste product that gets flared off in many oil-producing parts of Texas. If this private power plant can use that gas for something productive then I guess at least we're no worse off. But it's not clear that is what is happening.

NooneAtAll3•about 2 hours ago

efficient in money, nothing is said about other metrics

it's quite possible to have more product made, thus more pollution (or less materials consumed, thus less)

but concentration definitely will rise

khimaros•about 1 hour ago

sometime in the energy sector once told me "the solution to pollution is dilution"

wat10000•about 1 hour ago

Which is nonsense. There's plenty of pollution that's been diluted as much as it possibly can be and is still problematic. CO2 is an obvious example. Or consider leaded gasoline or mercury. You have to be careful not to eat too much fish or you'll have trouble with the mercury in it. That's been diluted by the entire ocean and that didn't solve it.

wat10000•about 1 hour ago

A bigger unit is generally more efficient, but this is a single plant with a bunch of units, and I don't know that the individual units are any bigger than they would be elsewhere.

vladmk•23 minutes ago

Someone’s gotta stop this who idk - that’s the problem

burnt-resistor•about 2 hours ago

These jet engine gas turbines create air pollution in the forms of formaldehyde and NOx and noise pollution.

ares623•about 1 hour ago

Finally, a structure worthy of its namesake.

senderista•19 minutes ago

"Shareholder Value Pledge Arena"

chinathrow•about 1 hour ago

> 7.65 gigawatt gas power plant

This is another level of insanity, right there.

selectodude•24 minutes ago

Second largest hydrocarbon power generator in the world. Unreal.

casey2•about 2 hours ago

This completely ignores carbon capture and offsets. Amazon remains committed to net zero.

forestrywat•26 minutes ago

Amazon is not capturing this amount of carbon. And the offsets are all smoke and mirrors.

_ink_•about 1 hour ago

Amazon is not capturing carbon in any meaningful scale and planting trees is great, until they capture fire.

brianaker•7 minutes ago

Trees are wonderful for a number of reasons, and the need for them for local climate, which includes shading and their contribution to local humidity, is important as well.

They are not, though, a significant sequestration for CO₂.

A helpful way to think about this is to consider coal. To produce coal the energy input comes from time, pressure, etc over tens to thousands of millions of years.

The significance of trees is for the local climate, or global if you are considering one of handful of rainforests.

bethekidyouwant•about 3 hours ago

Co2 is pollution now?

mirzap•about 2 hours ago

On an industrial scale, yes, of course.

esseph•about 1 hour ago

Yes, by burning fuels we release carbon from the thing being burned, it gets mixed with oxygen, and released into the atmosphere as co2.

As the suns energy warms the earth, the earth radiates heat back out and away from the surface and normally back out into space. co2 also acts like a blanket for that radiant heat, and traps it inside.

More co2 in the atmosphere traps more energy around the planet like an insulated wrap.

To reduce this, we have to extract the carbon out of the atmosphere and store it.

cebert•about 3 hours ago

Yes

goatlover•about 2 hours ago

It's the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Where have you been?

BurningFrog•about 2 hours ago

Sure, but it's only damaging globally. It's no more damaging to the local environment than to anywhere else on the planet.