A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee.<\/p>\n
xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.<\/p>\n
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared<\/a> on Thursday that the generators were not exempt. In its ruling, the agency revised the policies around gas turbines, saying that operating the machines still requires air permits even if they are used on a portable or temporary basis, as had been the case.<\/p>\n When xAI first installed the portable turbines at Colossus 1, it took advantage of a local county loophole allowing the operation of generators without permits so long as the machines did not sit in one place for more than 364 days. At one point, up to 35 of these generators<\/a> were powering Colossus 1. xAI eventually received permits for 15 turbines at Colossus 1 and is now operating 12 permitted machines at the site.<\/p>\n Under the EPA\u2019s new ruling, the permitting for these turbines would fall under federal law. It is unclear how or whether the government will penalize companies who are not in compliance. The EPA spokesperson did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s questions about enforcement.<\/p>\n The ruling is a win for community activists in Memphis who have been battling xAI\u2019s use of the portable turbines<\/a> as long as the generators have been in use. They say the datacenter, which sits a few miles from historically Black neighborhoods, has been adding extra pollution to already overburdened communities.<\/p>\n \u201cOur communities, air, water and land are not playgrounds for billionaires chasing another buck,\u201d said Abre\u2019 Conner, the director of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP, which initiated a lawsuit against xAI last July saying the unpermitted turbines were violating the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n Methane gas turbines pump harmful nitrogen oxides into the air, which are known to cause cancer, asthma and other upper respiratory diseases.<\/p>\n \u201cThe agency estimates the final action will result in the net annual [nitrogen oxide] emission reductions of up to 296 tons by 2032,\u201d an EPA spokesperson told the Guardian.<\/p>\n For xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, the turbines are necessary to supply additional power to its huge supercomputers. At full capacity, xAI\u2019s Colossus 1 datacenter uses 150 megawatts of electricity \u2013 enough power to run 100,000 homes<\/a> \u2013 and the company plans to expand.<\/p>\n Musk set up Colossus 1<\/a> in just 122 days during the summer of 2024, record time for getting a datacenter up and running. Colossus 2, which is even bigger at 1m-square-feet, went under construction last year and is located on the border of Memphis in Southaven, Mississippi. A third xAI data center, also in Southaven, just got under way<\/a> last week. In a post on X<\/a>, Musk said this supercomputer was named \u201cMACROHARDRR\u201d and would need nearly 2 gigawatts of computing power.<\/p>\n