Its AI is connected to a clandestine gas plant

Elon Musk’s last controversy has nothing to do with rockets, nor with his political comments on social networks, but with a potentially illegal installation who is playing with the public health of his neighbors in Memphis.

Short. The XAI artificial intelligence startup, founded by Elon Musk, faces a possible federal demand for feeding Your gigantic Memphis Data Center With a gas power plant that, according to the complainants, has been operating without the necessary permits and contaminating the air of the region.

The epicenter of the conflict is the Colossus Data Center, where Xai trains his AI models with hundreds of thousands of specialized nvidia chips. To quench the enormous energy demand from its graphics cards, the company installed dozens of natural gas turbines. Now the Southern Environmental Law Center (Selc) threatens to sue the company for “flagrant violations” of the United States Clean Air Law.

Aerial photos and thermal cameras. According to the NECC notification, “during the last year, XAI has installed and operated at least 35 combustion turbines and other sources of air pollution in the Colossus facilities without ever having obtained the necessary permissions of preconstruction or operation.”

Before “the lack of transparency of XAI and the ambiguous response of the local authorities”, which came to suggest that the turbines were “exempt from permits”, the SELC hired an air photographer to document the facilities. In March there were 35 turbines in operation. In April, at least 33 were full functioning, emitting large amounts of heat.

A third recognition flight made on June 15 revealed that, far from being withdrawn, There were still 26 turbines next to Colossus. But there is something else: XAI has installed three larger new turbines. The total generation capacity is now approximately 407 megawatts, just 14 MW less than at its peak of March.

The authorities are with XAI. In early May, the Great Memphis Chamber of Commerce He issued a statement trying to calm the waters. They claimed that the turbines were “temporary” and that they would be “paralyzed and removed” in the following two months, once the data center connected to the electricity grid.

They also assured that approximately half would remain standing to feed phase II of the Colossus project, until a second substation was ready, at which time they would become just a system of support of the electricity grid.

The capital of asthma. The matter acquires a more worrying channel if we take into account that Memphis already suffers one of the worst air qualities in the United States. In 2024 she was designated as the “capital of asthma” of the country for its high rates of visits to emergency and deaths linked to this disease.

A 400 MW gas plant has the potential to emit more than 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOX) per year, chemical compounds precursors of the tuxedo. While companies like Xai, OpenAi and Google compete to develop the most powerful AI models, the infrastructure necessary to feed them this bringing to the limit to the electrical networks And, as this case demonstrates, it can push companies to take regulatory shortcuts with an environmental cost.

Image | Steve Jones on a Southwings flight for SELC

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