Simple-Cycle Turbines Make AI Data Centers Dirty
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- Amazon acquired an off-grid Texas power plant permitted to emit up to 33 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, relying solely on simple-cycle turbines that waste heat that combined-cycle units would recapture as additional energy.
- Even at half its permitted emissions, Amazon's Texas facility would generate more greenhouse gas pollution than 78 average-sized natural gas plants, according to EPA data cited in the source.
- Simple-cycle turbines are also powering Meta/Williams projects in Ohio, 39 turbines at Crusoe's Stargate campus for Microsoft in Abilene, 20 turbines at Google's Goodnight data center in Texas, and dozens more at xAI's Colossus 1 and 2 sites in Memphis.
- Developers are choosing simple-cycle units because turbine supply-chain backlogs make them faster and cheaper to install, and their ability to start up and shut down rapidly suits AI training's on-demand energy spikes—spikes so extreme that operators have reported turbines breaking from the stress.
- Amazon's permit application lists simple-cycle turbines' lack of water use as an "environmental benefit"—a 250 MW combined-cycle plant can use roughly 75,000 gallons of water per hour according to Industrial Info Resources' Britt Burt.
- Amazon and Williams said their plants are designed to potentially transition to grid-connected service, but for now the build-out risks creating a parallel fossil-fuel grid that could leave these decades-long facilities as stranded assets if AI energy demand dips.
Why it matters: The shift to simple-cycle turbines locks in decades of avoidable emissions at a time when AI demand is forcing the fastest power build-out in years. Amazon's Texas plant alone could outpoll 78 average gas plants even running at half its permit, and the same inefficient approach is now spreading across Meta, Microsoft, Google, and xAI campuses—prioritizing speed-to-power over the combined-cycle efficiency standard used by the existing grid.
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