Home · Technology · Sep 12 archive
Trump is giving data centers a pass to pollute
Confirmed
In Short: Tech companies like Oracle and OpenAI are developing large-scale data centers despite legal challenges and local opposition, focusing on renewable energy pledges but still relying on natural gas.
Oracle and OpenAI are developing the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center in New Mexico, part of President Trump's Stargate AI infrastructure project. However, the project faces legal challenges and local protests over environmental concerns.
New Mexico’s Land Office has blocked requests to run a natural gas pipeline to the data center, and the New Mexico Supreme Court has paused the air quality permitting process. Despite these hurdles, work on the project has continued, reaching 26 percent completion.
Oracle has pledged to invest in 2 gigawatts of renewable energy projects, but this won't change the data center's use of fuel cells that consume natural gas. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock is calling for a statewide moratorium on data centers in Georgia.
The OpenAI data center in Effingham County, Georgia, has drawn widespread opposition from locals, and other coastal communities are also protesting against data centers. Environmental groups are pushing for statewide policies to regulate data center growth.
What's confirmed
- Oracle and OpenAI are developing the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center in New Mexico, part of President Trump's Stargate AI infrastructure project. However, the project faces legal challenges and local protests over environmental concerns.
- New Mexico’s Land Office has blocked requests to run a natural gas pipeline to the data center, and the New Mexico Supreme Court has paused the air quality permitting process. Despite these hurdles, work on the project has continued, reaching 26 percent completion.
- Oracle has pledged to invest in 2 gigawatts of renewable energy projects, but this won't change the data center's use of fuel cells that consume natural gas. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock is calling for a statewide moratorium on data centers in Georgia.
- The OpenAI data center in Effingham County, Georgia, has drawn widespread opposition from locals, and other coastal communities are also protesting against data centers. Environmental groups are pushing for statewide policies to regulate data center growth.
What's still developing
- “Like all matching programs, this would be synthetic in the sense that 2 GW of renewables wouldn’t directly power the data center,” wrote Michael Thomas, CEO of the Cleanview data platform that tracks renewable energy and data center projects, in a LinkedIn post.
- Compared to the original plan for gas turbines, the deployment of 2.45 gigawatts of fuel cells could reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by more than 90 percent and “substantially” reduce the amount of other air pollutants, like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide, according to Julia Robin, VP of networking and data capacity management at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, in a commentary published in the Santa Fe New Mexican.
- Warnock applauded the community for coming together to oppose the data center.
- Artificial Intelligence & Data Centers - Inside Climate News Skip to content Science Politics Justice & Health Fossil Fuels Clean Energy ICN Local Projects Impact Podcast About Us Open Menu Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonpartisan reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet.
- Wes Moore’s reelection less than two months away, Maryland’s environmental community is asking Annapolis to slam the brakes on rapid data center growth and create a statewide policy.
- In campaign ads airing everywhere from Georgia to Iowa, Republicans and Democrats are confronting the same enemy: data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom.