This post was originally published on the Cleanview newsletter, which I also write. I’m sharing it here with Distilled readers given that I think many of you will be interested in the topic.
Amazon is building more data centers than any company in the world. In the United States, the company now consumes more electricity than the federal government. Over the next decade, Amazon plans to more than quadruple its data center capacity.
Today we’re publishing our report on how Amazon plans to power all of its data centers in the US. Over the last few months, we’ve read through hundreds of utility filings, air permits, county records and interconnection studies. This work has already led to important discoveries like the news that we broke about Amazon’s planned 7.65 GW natural gas power plant in West Texas.
While the scale of Amazon’s West Texas gas plant is staggering, it only scratches the surface of the company’s growing power fleet. We found more than 40 GW of power deals between Amazon and its partners.
Our team tracks data centers every day and even we were surprised by what we learned in this research. Here’s some of what we found:
Amazon has nearly doubled its footprint in just a few years
When ChatGPT launched and ushered in the generative AI era, Amazon operated 7.4 GW of data center capacity in the US. Since then, the company has nearly doubled its footprint.
No other company comes close to Amazon’s lead as the largest data center operator. Amazon has 69% more capacity than the next hyperscaler, Microsoft, and roughly double Google and Meta’s capacity.
Amazon is spending big to keep its lead. The company expects to spend $220 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, which is 3.5 times what it spent in 2022. Most of that money will go to data centers and the chips inside them.
The speed and scale of this buildout is visible from space. In the satellite images below, you can see Amazon’s New Carlisle campus in March 2024 and March 2026. In just two years, the company built the world’s largest data center—a 1 GW campus dedicated to its customer, Anthropic.1
Amazon’s old power playbook broke
Up until 2022, Amazon built nearly all of its US data center capacity in three states: Virginia, Oregon, and Ohio. Each state hosts one of AWS’s three main US regions.
Amazon’s playbook to power those data centers was relatively simple. It signed standard commercial and industrial service contracts with utilities that had available grid capacity, then matched its electricity consumption with renewable PPAs. Utilities rarely, if ever, had to build new power plants to serve the company.
That playbook worked for 15 years. But it stopped working in all three of its primary data center markets within a two-year window. In Virginia, Ohio, and Oregon, utilities that served Amazon for more than a decade simply ran out of power.
Since then, the company has started development in 13 new states. 27 GW of the 44 GW now under development is in those new markets. Texas alone has 7.6 GW in the pipeline, and Pennsylvania has 5 GW.
“The Everything Store” is buying every kind of power it can
No company in America has contracted more carbon-free electricity than Amazon. The company has contracted 25.6 GW of carbon-free electricity in the US, including 17.9 GW of solar and 4.4 GW of wind. It has also bought more nuclear power than any other hyperscaler, including 1,920 MW from the Susquehanna plant in Pennsylvania and 1,200 MW from Comanche Peak in Texas.
Amazon’s sustainability reports mention these deals often. But the company also has a large and growing gas power fleet it doesn’t talk about much publicly.
Utilities and independent power producers are building 17.5 GW of new gas generation to serve Amazon’s growing power needs. GW Ranch, the planned 7.65 GW gas plant in West Texas, is just one of 8 gas power plants that will serve Amazon’s data center load.
Get the full report
These are just a few of the many takeaways from our comprehensive analysis of Amazon’s data center power strategy. Here’s what’s inside the full report:
Data file covering 825 US Amazon data centers across 149 campuses, including the exact location, power capacity, square footage, status, and operating year.
Amazon’s operating, under construction and planned capacity by state
A breakdown of Amazon’s contracted power by energy type
The 8 gas plants that will power Amazon’s future data centers
How Amazon contracts with clean energy developers
Case studies on Amazon’s power strategy in Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Indiana, and Texas
How Amazon built the largest data center in the world without building any new power plants
The transmission lines that could make or break Amazon’s data center plans
You can purchase the full report, download a free preview, or learn more about our research subscriptions by clicking the button below.
xAI’s Colossus has since surpassed AWS New Carlisle to become the largest data center in the world.
The IEA’s new grid report estimates technology upgrades could connect up to 330 GW of supply, storage and demand. Next quarter, utility studies should clarify where that headroom accelerates Amazon’s energisation schedule.