This past summer, activists at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) announced they were going after Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, for what it claimed were “unpermitted gas turbines that threaten to make air pollution problems even worse,” in the Memphis area, where the xAI “Colossus” data centers are located. It appears the SELC has now prevailed, because the language of a general ruling from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding that type of turbine essentially confirms the activists’ assertion, undermining the Grok parent company’s legal rubric for using the equipment.
In order to serve the computational needs of products like the Grok AI chatbot, Grokipedia, and the Grok image generator, xAI was generating off-grid power for its data center with gas-powered turbines and classifying them as “non-road engines”—temporary generators, ostensibly used for more transitory purposes. That temporary status, it was apparently hoped, would have made them exempt from air quality requirements. The newly updated EPA rules clarify that using such turbines, even temporarily, does not confer any such exemption from clean air rules.
According to the Guardian, the placement of the initial “Colossus 1” turbines—which eventually came to number 35—benefited from a local loophole in environmental laws that says generators don’t require permits as long as they’re in place for 364 days or less. The Guardian’s reporting also notes that xAI now has locally permitted generators at the sites, but that the new EPA rules say the federal government is now in charge of such permitting, not the local authorities.
In a statement published by the NAACP, SELC senior attorney Amanda Garcia said this decision “makes it clear that companies are not—and have never been—allowed to build and operate methane gas turbines without a permit and that there is no loophole that would allow corporations to set up unpermitted power plants,” adding that her organization expects “local health leaders to take swift action to ensure they are following federal law and to better protect neighbors from harmful air pollution.”
This feels like a lifetime ago, but just under a year ago, during Elon Musk’s tenure at DOGE, Musk sought to slash EPA contracts with the stated aim of reducing government waste. The EPA’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, said at the time, “DOGE is making us better,” adding, “They come up with great recommendations, and we can make a decision to act on it.”
Posting the savings and the receipts https://t.co/2SywWa3TRN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025
xAI’s media contact email address sends a three-word auto-reply in response to all inquiries, including one from Gizmodo about what the turbine situation currently is for the relevant facilities in Tennessee. Gizmodo also asked xAI if the Colossus data centers are operating at reduced capacity while the permitting issues are being resolved. We will update if we receive a useful response.
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