This article was originally published by Gas Outlook.
A massive data centre at xAI’s controversial site in Memphis, Tennessee is emitting huge plumes of pollution, according to footage recorded by an environmental watchdog group.
xAI quickly built an enormous data centre and supercomputer at an empty factory site in Memphis last year, aimed at providing computational power for xAI’s chatbot, called Grok. Having difficulty securing enough grid power to fuel the energy-hungry data centre, xAI brought in 35 portable gas turbines, and assembled them without environmental permits or pollution controls.
A new video, recorded by Oil Field Witness, an environmental group, shows vast plumes of pollution coming from those gas turbines.
“It’s a power plant. That’s what it is,” Sharon Wilson, director of Oil Field Witness, told Gas Outlook.
Wilson has extensive experience documenting methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. But the pollution coming from the xAI site, she said, was remarkable.
“I have shot video all over the U.S., all over the UK, and in Japan. I’ve never seen anything that bad,” Wilson said. “The amount, the size of the plume…it’s really, just horrible.”
To the naked eye the pollution is not visible.
But through the lens of Wilson’s optical gas imaging camera, a scientific instrument that is used within the oil and gas industry and by regulators to detect methane emissions, the pollution becomes readily apparent. Huge, billowing plumes of pollution, including large volumes of unburned methane, rise into the atmosphere and drift off-site.
The explosive growth of data centres, needed to fuel the AI boom, has taken centre stage in the energy industry. AI proponents suggest that AI can offer climate solutions, such as optimising electric grid management or improving disaster warning systems.
But for the oil and gas industry, AI has taken over as one of the most important sources of demand growth for the foreseeable future, offering a temporary lifeline to an industry facing long-term decline.
Electricity demand for data centres in the U.S. could triple over the next three years. Some studies suggest that the U.S. could add as much as 46 gigawatts of new gas-fired power plant capacity by 2030. Data centres could account for 6.7 to 12 percent of total U.S. electricity demand by 2028, up from 4.4 percent in 2023, according to a U.S. government report.
Silicon Valley firms are moving as fast as possible to construct new data centres to build up their computing power. The AI arms race has resulted in Big Tech casting aside its climate ambitions. Between 2020 and 2023, indirect carbon emissions from the top tech giants increased by 150 percent. Given the rate of change in the world of AI, that figure is already badly out of date.
Notably, xAI’s chatbot, Grok, has downplayed the severity of climate change much more than its competitors, and at times regurgitates fringe viewpoints.
The data centre gold rush has put a squeeze on the availability of gas turbines, inflating equipment and labour costs. Any orders for new gas turbines will take years to fulfil.
But data centres are springing up all over the country. In Texas, data centre developers are building their own gas plants, not connected to the grid.
In Memphis, xAI’s difficulty connecting to grid electricity didn’t stop them. While the local utility is working on upgrading grid infrastructure, xAI quietly brought in 35 temporary gas turbines and assembled them without environmental permits.
“xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities,” Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) Senior Attorney Amanda Garcia said in a statement in April. “These dozens of gas turbines are doing significant harm to the air Memphians breathe every day.”
In January, many months after the site was operational, xAI applied for air permits — but only for 15 gas turbines that the company said would be permanent.
But in April, SELC commissioned a flyover and captured thermal images that provided evidence that 33 of 35 gas turbines were emitting heat, suggesting they are in operation.
The latest video from Oil Field Witness, which shows enormous amounts of pollution, bolsters the case that xAI’s data centre is emitting methane and other damaging pollutants into Memphis neighbourhoods.
Gas turbines can release ozone-depleting nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, sulphur dioxide, and other pollutants that can contribute to heart disease, cancer, and respiratory illnesses.
Tim Doty, a retired Texas environmental regulator who has decades of experience using optical gas imaging cameras, reviewed the video and corroborated the main conclusions. Doty worked for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for nearly 30 years.
“It is extremely significant. Definitely. It’s a significant emission plume,” Doty said. “It goes way above the facility. And it appears to me to be going off property.”
“If I was a regulator and saw those images, I would be contacting the company to try to figure out what’s going on,” he said.
The Shelby County Health Department did not respond to questions from Gas Outlook.
xAI also did not respond.
Data Centre’s Pollution Impact
xAI’s supercomputer, named “Colossus,” has support from top local officials, who view the data centre as an important source of tax revenue. The tech company did not ask for tax exemptions, as many corporations setting up data centres tend to do, which could result in the city of Memphis taking in $25 to $30 million in property tax from xAI this year.
“We are living in a city right now where we have not seen growth for many years. We need investment in Memphis, we need money,” Memphis Mayor Paul Young said at a public forum in March, comments that were met with pushback from members of the community. “We got housing problems, transit problems, we have roads where everybody is sending me messages about how we are going to fill the potholes. We cannot do that unless there is more money coming into our tax base.”
“When I look at this project, I’m trying to figure out how to get the most for us,” Young said, referring to the xAI data centre.
The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, a trade association of regional business interests, has strongly supported xAI’s presence. In March, when xAI purchased another property for its expansion in southwest Memphis, the Greater Memphis Chamber celebrated the news as evidence that the city was attracting more tech investment.
“This significant expansion by xAI reinforces Memphis’s position as a premier destination for technological innovation,” said Ted Townsend, President and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber. “Memphis continues to prove itself as the ideal location for companies leading the future of technology.” The Chamber refers to the greater Memphis region as the “Digital Delta,” a region home to an array of advanced manufacturing facilities.
However, much of the Memphis community is up in arms. The city and its surroundings already had poor air quality before xAI came to town, and pollution measurements exceed federal air quality standards. The American Lung Association, a public health group, gave Shelby County an “F” on its air quality report card.
But the xAI supercomputer stands out as one of the largest sources of smog pollution in the region.
In April, Memphis residents packed a public hearing, shouting down an xAI official and loudly demanding accountability from the municipal and county governments.
“Saying that we need economic development at the cost of people’s lives is nonsensical,” Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson told Gas Outlook in an interview. Rep. Pearson lives three miles from the xAI site.
“This has been the argument that we have heard for decades in our communities — ‘if you just give us your life, then businesses will want to be here.’ But we don’t want businesses who want to take our lives in exchange for their own profits.”
When Rep. Pearson saw the footage from Oil Field Witness, which made visible the extensive pollution that is invisible to the naked eye, he said it was shocking.
“It hurt my stomach. I had never seen anything like it,” he said.
“This angered me because this is what we’re fighting about. This is what we’re trying to explain to people,” he added. “But to see it firsthand with that camera and knowing the consequences of what they are doing was really upsetting. And it just makes me more righteously indignant, that we’re doing the right thing.”
The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce said in early May that the gas turbines at the xAI site are “being demobilized” as the site begins to connect to grid power.
But the Oil Field Witness footage, taken on May 13th, indicates that the site continues to burn substantial volumes of gas at those temporary turbines.
In late May, national civil rights group NAACP called on the Shelby County Health Department to impose an “emergency” shutdown of the xAI site.
xAI has ambitious plans for expansion, aiming to more than double the use of gas in the greater Memphis region. The U.S. EPA is reviewing an air permit for 40 to 90 additional gas turbines to be used at a second site in the city, according to documents obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), a nonprofit environmental legal advocacy group.
U.S. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin met with xAI in May and the agency is reviewing an air permit for the company.
If the second supercomputer site moves forward with more gas turbines, the pollution and the health damage inflicted on city residents could grow significantly worse.
“We have seen an uptick in the number of kids missing school and having respiratory illness like asthma,” Rep. Pearson said. “This is real and the people who are supposed to protect us are not doing their jobs.”
(Writing by Nick Cunningham; editing by Sophie Davies)
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