Your AI Tools Run On Fracked Gas And Bulldozed Texas Land
The AI revolution has a hidden cost — and it’s not just data privacy or jobs. Your AI tools run on fracked gas and bulldozed Texas land, fueling an unexpected comeback for one of America’s most controversial industries.
Image Credits:Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle / Getty Images
As the race to build smarter, faster, and more capable AI systems accelerates, energy demand is soaring. Companies are erecting massive data centers across Texas, many powered directly by fossil fuels. It’s a stark reminder that the digital future still relies heavily on old-world energy.
Fracking Gets A Second Act In The Age Of AI
The AI era is giving fracking a surprising second act. Even during its 2010s boom, fracking drew fierce criticism for polluting water tables, triggering man-made earthquakes, and extending the life of fossil fuels. Now, with AI’s insatiable hunger for computing power, the practice is quietly making a comeback.
Instead of powering cars or homes, natural gas is now fueling the data centers behind your AI tools — from coding assistants to chatbots — reshaping how and where energy is consumed.
Texas: Ground Zero For AI Energy Expansion
Take the latest example. The Wall Street Journal reports that AI startup Poolside is building a massive 500-acre data center complex in West Texas — roughly two-thirds the size of Central Park. The facility, named Horizon, will generate its own power by tapping into the Permian Basin, the most productive oil and gas field in the U.S.
This site alone will produce two gigawatts of computing power — the same output as the Hoover Dam — but powered by fracked gas, not hydroelectric energy. Poolside’s partner, CoreWeave, supplies access to over 40,000 Nvidia chips, cementing Texas as the new frontier for energy-hungry AI infrastructure.
“An Energy Wild West” For AI Companies
The Journal aptly describes this as an “energy Wild West.” Yet Poolside is far from an outlier. Nearly every major AI player is pursuing similar strategies, from Google to OpenAI.
Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman openly admitted during a visit to his company’s Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas:
“We’re burning gas to run this data center.”
That site alone needs 900 megawatts of electricity across eight buildings — enough to power a small city. It includes a gas-fired power plant using military-grade turbines. While companies insist most energy comes from the local grid, that grid itself relies heavily on natural gas, even as Texas boasts massive solar and wind farms.
The Hidden Climate Dilemma Behind AI Progress
The phrase “Your AI tools run on fracked gas and bulldozed Texas land” captures a growing tension. As AI advances, it demands enormous energy — and the source of that energy matters.
While tech leaders talk about “AI for climate solutions,” the reality on the ground is murkier. Data centers are expanding across ecologically sensitive areas, clearing land, and tapping fossil fuel pipelines in the process. The AI boom, once hailed as a path to sustainability, is beginning to mirror the industrial extraction patterns it once sought to fix.
The Road Ahead: Can AI Go Green?
The challenge now is balancing innovation with sustainability. AI companies are investing in renewable projects, but progress is slow compared to the pace of AI expansion. Critics warn that without strict environmental oversight, the same Texas land being bulldozed for data centers could become the next battleground in the climate debate.
Until then, every chatbot query, image generator, and language model runs on energy drawn from a world still tethered to fracked gas and fossil fuels.
In the race to make machines smarter, the industry risks forgetting what powers them. Your AI tools run on fracked gas and bulldozed Texas land — a reality that challenges Silicon Valley’s clean-tech narrative and demands a reckoning about how “intelligent” progress really is.
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