Amazon финансирует крупнейшую газовую электростанцию США ради ИИ-дата-центров

Amazon announced it is financing the largest gas power plant in the United States and launched the first corporate data center operating off the centralized energy grid — both in 2026, in the midst of the race for AI computing capacity. Both decisions called into question the climate commitments the company made seven years ago.

What is an off-grid data center?

Amazon's first off-the-grid data center operates entirely autonomously: it is powered by its own generation without connection to the centralized public grid. According to Ars Technica, the move was a direct response to a pressing problem in American energy — in some states, queues for grid interconnection for large new consumers stretch five to ten years.

The autonomous format changes the logic of construction:

• No dependence on overloaded regional grid operators
• The facility is built in parallel with its energy source — with no waiting for permits
• The speed of commissioning increases manifold — critical in the race for AI computing
• This is the first such facility in the AWS portfolio, but analysts expect the model to be replicated

Why is Amazon financing gas — despite the Climate Pledge?

Amazon is financing the construction of a gas power plant that, according to Ars Technica's assessment, risks becoming the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States. This is a direct contradiction of the company's public commitments: in 2019, Amazon signed the Climate Pledge — a commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement's timeline.

The reason for this choice is technical and economic. Solar and wind generation do not cover baseload without large-scale storage, and the construction of battery systems at the required industrial scale is significantly lagging behind the growth in demand from AI data centers.

"Amazon announced the first off-grid data center in the race for AI profits," as

Ars Technica framed it, describing the company's strategic choice.

Amazon is not alone in this decision. Microsoft in 2024 reached an agreement to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant; Google is investing in small modular reactors. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global electricity consumption by data centers in 2026 will for the first time exceed 1,000 TWh per year — comparable to Japan's energy consumption.

What this means

Amazon's decisions in 2026 demonstrate that in the race for AI infrastructure, reliability requirements and speed of capacity deployment are prevailing over declared climate goals. For investors and regulators, this is a signal — the actual emissions of the cloud industry will continue to grow, even if corporate ESG reports remain green. The question is who will be the first to demand real accountability: the market, regulators, or shareholders.