By Mary Ellen Klas / Bloomberg Opinion
Build a massive supercomputer housed in a plant powered by methane gas-burning turbines that emit an undisclosed amount of pollutants into a disadvantaged community. Obtain no environmental permits. Ask permission later.
That’s the approach Elon Musk has taken in the city of Memphis, Tenn., as he rushes to build two massive data centers to provide computing power for his artificial intelligence startup xAI. It’s a scenario America might have to get used to as the Trump administration sidles up to Big Tech and devalues environmental protection in service to an AI arms race.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in March that he was open to lowering air quality standards which have “served as a major obstacle to permitting” energy operations. He has since opened the door to allowing some manufacturers to bypass Clean Air Act regulations.
These statements coincide with a push by Musk and other tech titans to usher in a new era of supercomputing by running AI programs that tap the properties of quantum physics at unprecedented speeds. The operations consume enormous amounts of water and power, raising widespread environmental concerns.
In Memphis, those fears have been punctuated by a trail of confusion, secrecy and deception as residents — who had been kept in the dark for months — started asking questions.
According to the local utility provider, Memphis Light, Gas and Water, Musk’s xAI facility will need an estimated 1 million gallons of water a day and up to 150 megawatts of electricity — more than is currently available in the city.
But no local leaders, from Mayor Paul Young to the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, which has served as xAI’s liaison to the region, have provided a comprehensive explanation for how the startup is going to meet the supercomputer plant’s energy needs. They also haven’t answered why a massive new power plant was allowed to operate without a permit.
Local officials have suggested the supercomputer plant will be “transformative” for the region and bring jobs, infrastructure, and long-needed revenue. But the regulatory approach appears to have come down to this: trust us.
The community is not having it and is aggressively pushing back. Southwest Memphis is home to Boxtown, a historically Black community with higher rates of cancer and asthma and a lower life expectancy than other parts of the city. State health data shows that the county leads Tennessee in emergency room visits for asthma. A long-term study of ambient air toxics in the region found at least 22 local pollution sources and a cumulative cancer risk four times higher than the national average. And in April, the American Lung Association gave the region an “F” for its air quality.
“A decade of continued failure has to end here with this illegal pollution of our community,’’ wrote KeShaun Pearson, president of Memphis Community Against Pollution. He was urging residents to show up for an April 25 public hearing on the xAI plant. “We are not a sacrifice zone for the profits of a Billionaire with Technocratic fantasies.”
Pearson and his community want the Shelby County Health Department, which has regulatory oversight, to require xAI to get the proper permits and follow the air quality protections that state and federal law require. The community packed the public hearing and an earlier town hall and, on Friday, the health department announced it had received 1,700 public comments and it will take them another 60 days to complete the permit review.
But the company not only keeps barreling ahead, it’s expanding. Last June, Musk announced that xAI had bought a shuttered appliance factory near the Boxtown neighborhood to build what he calls “Colossus”— the “world’s largest supercomputer.” Within just 122 days, he had the operation online. By March, the Chamber of Commerce announced that xAI had purchased another property nearby, which would more than double its Memphis operations.
To provide power to the site, the company found what it considers a loophole in the Clean Air Act and used it to install several methane-powered gas turbines. It said they would only be used temporarily as the company waited for Memphis Light, Gas and Water to build the infrastructure needed to meet its power needs. It applied for air quality permits to permanently operate 15 of them.
Without reliable data, the Southern Environmental Law Center took satellite images of the xAI facility. The photos revealed that instead of 15 turbines, xAI had quietly moved in at least 35 portable methane gas turbines, none of which had air quality permits.
In response, Mayor Young said that the company told him that only 15 of the turbines were operating and the remaining were “being stored” at the plant. The center conducted a follow-up flyover to get thermal images of the facility. The images revealed that 33 of the 35 turbines were releasing significant amounts of heat, indicating they were likely running, Amanda Garcia, the group’s senior attorney, told me.
Neither the company nor the Shelby County Health Department released any information about the pollutants emitted by the gas turbines. According to guidelines written by the turbine manufacturer, the engines release ozone-depleting nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde into the air.
The Southern Environmental Law Center also found other troubling signs of likely deception. At a public hearing in April, Brent Mayo, xAI’s site leader in Memphis, tried to explain that the operation will be equipped with “selective catalytic reduction technology” to lower emissions.
But Garcia said aerial images showed no evidence that such emissions-reducing equipment had been installed, and an xAI consultant recently told a chamber group that “the turbines would have to be retrofitted” to do that.
The size of the second xAI plant now has residents even more concerned. The Chamber of Commerce has announced that the 40 to 90 methane gas turbines planned for that site would no longer be used there. But last week, the Daily Memphian reported that the company was considering a plan to install gas turbines across the border at a former natural gas plant in Southaven, Mississippi.
“Air pollution doesn’t know borders of states,” Garcia said, adding that the entire region already measures levels of ozone pollution that exceed the federal limit. The EPA is unlikely to step up to protect these residents. The agency has shut down the teams created under the Biden White House to address environmental justice issues. It’s going to be up to communities like Boxtown to fight back.
Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades. ©2025 Bloomberg L.P., bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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