Just eleven gas-powered data centers in the US could belch more greenhouse emissions than countries with populations of tens of millions of people, according to a new analysis by Wired.
The magazine examined emissions estimates provided by gas power projects that are being built to supply energy to the data centers. Construction of these sprawling facilities has surged to meet the demands of the AI industry, and to get them online as soon as possible, many of the newly built data centers are relying on gas power. This strategy means data centers don’t have to wait to plug into local power grids and be saddled with the controversy that invites, such as surging energy bills. Gas turbines can be trucked in on-site and start providing power almost immediately.
The problem is that this practice of using “behind-the-meter power” has led to a “crazy acceleration of emissions,” said Michael Thomas, founder of the clean energy firm Cleanview, which has been tracking data center gas permits. Data released by the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor showed that nearly 100 gigawatts of behind-the-meter gas power for data centers were being developed at the start of 2027, compared to just four gigawatts at the start of 2024.
“It’s almost like we thought we were on the downside of the Industrial Revolution, retiring coal and gas, and now we have a new hump where we’re going to rise,” Thomas told Wired. “That terrifies me in a lot of ways.”
The biggest potential belcher in Wired’s analysis is Project Matador, a titanic proposed campus in the Texas panhandle which secured a permit to generate six gigawatts of gas power earlier this year. With projected CO2 emissions of over 40 million tons annually, this single facility could potentially release more greenhouse gases than the nation of Jordan. And each of Elon Musk’s new and notoriously noxious data center campuses, Colossus and Colossus 2 in Tennessee, could out-emit Iceland.
Taken together, the eleven facilities could release a maximum of 129 million tons of greenhouses gas per year, exceeding the carbon footprint of Morocco, a country of 38 million people.
There’s a catch to these estimates: they’re based on the maximum projected amount that gas power companies are asking regulators to allow them to emit, so in practice their emissions will likely fall short of those numbers.
“Permitted emission numbers represent a theoretical, conservative scenario, not the actual projected emissions,” Alex Schott, the director of communications at Williams Companies, an oil and gas company that’s building three behind-the-meter power plants for Meta, told Wired. The actual emissions could be “potentially two-thirds less than what’s on paper.”
There’s also the likelihood that not all of the gas facilities examined by Wired will be built. The fate of Project Matador, for example, is anything but certain as the company behind it, Fermi, appears to be foundering. The magazine notes, however, that if the actual emissions are even just half the figures on the permits, the data centers would still release more greenhouse gases than Norway did in 2024.
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