The massive surge of fossil fuel-powered data centers cropping up across the country are emitting an enormous amount of pollution, a pulsing indication that we’re headed in the wrong direction in the midst of a climate crisis.
The extent of the this polluting activity is confounding. As climate action group Floodlight found in a recent investigation spotted by Wired, Texas has become the epicenter of the United States’ current obsession with constructing AI data centers. Companies are exploiting regulatory loopholes as they construct new facilities powered by pollutant-spewing onsite gas plants.
The rate of growth of this “shadow grid” of custom power plants, some of which are big enough to fuel entire cities, is so enormous that the only global entity installing more gigawatts of gas plants than Texas is China, according to environmental group Global Energy Monitor.
On a national scale, scientists are still racing to wrap their heads around the environmental footprint of our new AI obsession. Cornell researchers found that at the current rate of AI growth, the burgeoning industry could represent 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, the equivalent of adding five to ten million cars to US roadways.
Meanwhile, ongoing projects like the one in Abilene, Texas, the starting point of president Donald Trump’s flagship $500 billion Stargate project, are obtaining environmental permits that are usually reserved for small businesses like gas stations or dry cleaners, as Wired reports. The project’s facilities feature a whopping 62 diesel backup generators, making it orders of magnitude bigger than smaller ventures that use just one or two.
According to Floodlight, at least 38 data centers in Texas are using such regulatory loopholes to gain permits for onsite power sources, representing northward of 2,100 backup diesel generators, and yearly emissions of 2,500 tons of nitrogen oxides, which are highly toxic gases.
One common tactic for operators in Texas, according to Floodlight, is to announce a small data center development that would come in under pollution thresholds, only to suddenly expand once established.
Worse yet, for residents, it’s already likely too late to do anything against the data center expansion.
“The only chance to stop something like this is to do it at the very, very, very beginning of the process — before the permit is issued — through the public participation process,” former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) staffer James Doty told Wired.
More on data center pollution: Amazon Is Spewing a Record Breaking Amount of Pollution to Power Its AI Data Centers
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