Who needs air anyway?
Data center and generator co-location as a threat to human survival.
I shifted my AI ethics advocacy to a focus on water because my key concern has always been community survival and human thriving. Communities cannot exist without drinkable water. They also cannot survive without clean air.
I live in the Bay Area of California, the epicenter of the AI boom. According to the American Lung Association, the Bay Area is the 7th most polluted city in the country in terms of fine particle pollution. The Bay Area is the seat of Silicon Valley and home to 140 of California’s 311 data centers. There are several additional data center projects in the works, including a recently approved 99MW Microsoft data center in Mountain View, and the fast-tracking of a 99MW data center housing complex in San Jose. But what is the connection here? Why am I talking about data centers in an article about air pollution?
The answer is simple - generators.
Generators are essentially a backup technology - a failsafe to enable data center operators to keep their systems running in the case of a power failure. Or, at least, they were. While most of the articles you’ll find on data center generators discuss them in this traditional role, AI data centers are fundamentally breaking with that construct. AI data centers are so power hungry that our electricity infrastructure cannot keep up. Responsible operators would plan for the constraint and find innovative ways to operate within these defined limitations until more power was made available. But this is tech. Responsibility isn’t really our thing.
So we’re filling the gap with generators. And we’re not talking about a gap of hours on an occasional basis, data center operators are running gas powered industrial size generators 24/7, with no stated end date. xAI built a 100,000 GPU data center in Memphis, Tennessee last year. The data center, which is being scaled up to 200,000 GPUs, requires 150MW of power to operate at the 100,000 GPU level. The Memphis power grid can only support 8MW of power. So xAI is using 35 ‘temporary’ methane gas burning turbines to power the facility. The generators are running all day, every day, producing 420MW of power, with no decommission plan.
xAI isn’t an anomaly, in the face of power constraints tech is turning to generators as a primary source of electricity. The practice of using generators to power data center operations is called “co-locating.” It has become such a standard practice that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been required to hold proceedings to address cost allocations between data center operators and grid operators, along with grid stability and reliability concerns. These rules are necessary because companies are increasingly creating their own infrastructure for these generator-first data centers by directly connecting to gas plants. Pipeline operators are overwhelmed by requests from data center operators to expand their pipeline networks to accommodate direct data center connections. Co-location is quickly becoming the norm, and data center operators are single-handedly revitalizing the natural gas industry.
But this isn’t a climate change discussion, it’s about human thriving. So why am I talking about natural gas?
According to the American Lung Association, the Bay Area is the 7th most polluted city in the country in terms of fine particle pollution. The Bay Area is the seat of Silicon Valley and home to to 140 of California’s 311 data centers. Data centers that are increasingly powering their operations using gas-powered generators. You know what kind of pollution gas-powered generators produce? Fine particle pollution.
Fine particulate matter pollution, also known as PM2.5, consists of particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller in diameter. These particles are uniquely capable of penetrating deep into lungs, making the health impacts of exposure very serious. Even short-term exposure to PM2.5 (hours to days), has a significant impact on mortality rates in urban areas. xAI’s generators have been running 24/7 for months.
We cannot afford the world we’re building. The world doesn’t have enough clean air or drinkable water to support both humanity and the technodream the zealots amongst us are attempting to impose on all of society. We keep waiting for these folks to either find their ‘better angels’ or begin to recognize the value of long-term strategic development but they are fervently and adamantly opposed to the eating of frogs. They have a vision for our future that doesn’t require any of us to have clean air as a generality. It just needs to be clean in our workspace. And our home. Which is… our workspace...
San Jose just fast-tracked an application to build a data center and housing complex in the middle of downtown. Data center and housing. Why wait for dispersion of the air pollution from all of the data centers located throughout the Bay Area to kill us slowly when we can just plop a data center in the middle of a downtown housing complex and suck the pollution directly from the source?
So, yeah, I’m talking air pollution now. Because, life. Life matters. And I’d like to thank Roishetta Sibley Ozane and Moms Clean Air Force for showing me the way.
Our communities, your community cannot survive without clean air and drinkable water. And they are both at risk in this data center ramp up. Abilene, Texas, they’re coming for you first but the list of affected states is long. It’s time to enter the fight.
Join us at Taps Run Dry, there is work that only you can do. We’re here to help you do it.