New US Generating Stations For AI Will Create Emissions Equal To Australia’s
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
The use of AI is growing exponentially month by month and day by day, but people differ about its value. Some say it can diagnose medical conditions better than any human doctor and at far less cost. One of our regular readers says it has helped him solve complex mathematical problems. On the other hand, it is being used to denigrate women by letting leering men create images of them wearing few if any clothes — Elon Musk’s xAI seems fixated on doing precisely that. Out of the public eye, governments are relying on AI to surveil their citizens and identify those who may need to be detained in the name of “national security.”
No matter what your opinion of AI might be, there is no argument about the amount of electrical power that will be required to run all of those data centers. A report this month by the Environmental Integrity Project claims the US is planning to build or expand 74 methane-fired generating stations to power the data centers that are expected to come online in the next few years. In December 2025, Bloomberg reported that data center power demand could hit 106 gigawatts by 2035, a 36 percent jump from the previous outlook published just seven months earlier. One gigawatt of power capacity can power a medium sized city of 750,000 homes.
A Huge Spike In Emissions
Those 74 new power plants are expected to release 662 million tons per year of greenhouse gas pollution — equivalent to the emissions of 140 million conventional cars and trucks, says Oil & Gas Watch. They could also release nearly 160,000 tons a year of other air pollutants, including more than 44,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and nearly 33,000 tons of fine particulate matter, according to the analysis by EIP.
To put things in perspective, those 662 million tons of greenhouse gasses are equal to all the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to Australia! We are talking about some serious, climate wrecking emissions here, people. And all to make Jason Huang, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and all the other tech multi-billionaires even wealthier. At what point do we stop and ask, “Is AI worth destroying our planet for?”
EIP adds the emissions estimates associated with all those new generating stations do not account for the pollution increase that would come from any new natural gas infrastructure — such as pipelines — needed to supply the methane they will require. In 2024, S&P Global estimated that additional electricity demand from data centers could increase natural gas demand by up to six billion cubic feet per day by 2030. Such a steep increase would require additional natural gas pipelines, processing plants, and storage facilities, adding even more emissions to the total.
The 74 plants included in the EIP report are called “behind-the-meter” power plants because they are designed not to compete with local households and businesses on regional power grids. Many other power plants are being planned across the US that will be connected to the power distribution grid and serve other consumers, along with data centers. Those will likely have more direct effects on electricity prices for nearby residents. However, behind-the-meter plants compete with utilities and other industrial sites for the same natural gas and power generating equipment, which results in rising prices for everyone, Oil & Gas Watch explained.
Emissions Are Surging At Tech Companies
One of the consequences of this mad dash toward the AI future is that companies like Google and Amazon are seeing their greenhouse gas emissions surge. Both have lofty net-zero ambitions, but the reality is, their contribution to a warming planet is going up rather than down.
According to Bloomberg, Amazon’s emissions rose 16 percent in 2025 compared to 2024. It emitted about 81 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent last year, roughly as much as the emissions from 19 million gasoline-powered cars on the road. The increase was driven by data center construction and fuel used for deliveries, a report by Amazon last week revealed.
Google has established “ambition-based” emissions goals — a definition that excludes some parts of its supply chain. They increased by 18 percent in 2025. Its Scope 1 emissions from its own operations, excluding purchased electricity, went up 20 percent compared to 2024, due in part to its expanding data center portfolio, the company said in its sustainability report released last week.
Amazon has a goal of reaching net zero by 2040, while Google is targeting 2030. Yet Google’s electricity usage increased by 37 percent last year, despite a small drop in its Scope 2 emissions from purchases of clean energy. Amazon said its emissions from buying electricity rose 34 percent.
Other tech giants are reckoning with the same challenge. Microsoft pledged to match 100 percent of its hourly electricity consumption with purchases of zero-carbon energy by 2030, but is considering scaling back that pledge because of data center expansion. In their most recent reports, both Microsoft and Meta cited emissions jumps of 23 percent and 64 percent respectively. Meta has established a net-zero target across its entire value chain by 2030.
Just building new data centers creates new emissions. Making concrete and steel are energy intensive. Google, in its new report, reported a 25 percent increase in Scope 3 or supply chain emissions over 2024 that it attributed mostly to hardware manufacturing and data center construction. “We’re essentially in a climate crisis and we should not be having emissions growth at all, arguably, and yet the data centers are going in the opposite direction,” said Sasha Luccioni, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Sustainable AI Group, which works to measure and limit the environmental impact of the sector.
Amazon and Google both said they remain committed to their sustainability targets. Google’s report noted that its path to net zero will not be linear, “given our AI infrastructure build out is currently accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing.” Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, said in the company report, “While the speed and scale of AI adoption is unique — and the change is happening faster and more broadly than anything else we’ve encountered in our lifetimes — the need to stay stubborn on our vision and flexible on the details is familiar territory.” Flowery words that essentially mean nothing.
This spring, activist investors asked Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta to explain how they will reconcile surging electricity demand for AI with their climate commitments, but none of the proposals earned majority support. And so the companies will continue shining us on while allowing their insatiable greed to continue destroying the environment. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Déja Vu All Over Again
CleanTechnica readers are all smarter than the average bear, and so they will notice something interesting with all this news about new power plants for AI. It was just a decade ago that people were running around like their hair was on fire screaming about all the new generating stations that would be needed to power the EV Revolution and all the crud they would put in the air!
Now AI mania is upon us and not a peep of protest can be heard from most of those people about the need to build 74 new methane-fired generating stations and the enormous amount of new emissions they will bring. No one is talking about carbon capture, or sequestration, or any other technologies to tame all that pollution.
What’s the difference between then and now? Simply this: The fossil fuel industry is not pumping out megatons of misinformation about AI the way it did about EVs. They see AI as a way to boost their profits, and if the environment degrades a little further because of it, who cares? There may never be an opportunity like this for the fossil fuel industry again and they intend to flog this profit avenue for all it’s worth. Capitalism without guardrails is just outright greed, and they are perfectly fine with that.
Are we willing to sacrifice our earthly home on the altar of AI? If so, history will not judge us kindly for our failure to protect the only planet we will ever know.
Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica's Comment Policy
