This of course makes no sense whatever, as whether or not a power generator is connected to the grid has nothing to do with its environmental impact.
Well, if you juuust let the rich get richer, something (intentionally left unspecified) will trickle down on you.
They want computers in racks now and (rightfully imo) look at yearslong approval processes with disgust. Look at Ashburn, VA - they extract loads of money from these companies, and they keep getting investments because constructing new datacenters is easy thanks to state laws.
It's not about the money here it's about the time.
Disgust of the rules for me but not for thee? The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
How about disgust for actual pollution? They could build clean, quiet and fast if "> It's not about the money it's about the time"
It doesn't add up, like at all.
Yes, it does. If you want solar? You need lots of panels on lots of land far away from the DC. You need transmission lines connecting the two. You need to fight NEPA/CEQA/whatever lawsuits for each element of the plan, the local town councils of wherever the hell you're trying to build, and the worst part is that they aren't even required to give you an answer - they can drag out the approvals for years until you give up and leave.
Compare that to a gas turbine, which can be trucked in, plugged in, and running inside a few days. Yeah, I think we should take measures to limit gas turbine deployments and encourage companies to spend more of their money connecting renewables to the grid, but that means that they need to be able to do it quickly and without catering too much to local interests.
> The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
The rest of us are not installing 1MW gas turbines in our backyards. Even if we were, I don't think the current administration wants to enforce environmental rules on anyone unless it's to block renewables construction.
Let's be clear, democracy isn't perfect and it usually isn't fast. But to date, it's the only system that has any hope of keeping the most powerful in check. Rejecting democracy is begging for someone who doesn't care about you to tell you what's right and wrong.
One AI company's "bullshit" is another citizen's "clean air and water". Since the AI companies don't care about those negative externalities, the government can act help to mitigate the damage.
These are just words. What matters are your actions. Your action is that you will cause other people to suffer pollution in order to enrich yourself. Why can't you stand up like a man and just say that that is what you want to do?
And if you say "I am doing this to benefit humanity who need even more AI so badly" - Well those are also just words.
The mindset is "if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it"
Step 2: declare end of the Anthropocene (defined by man made influence on earth), while simultaneously accelerating mass extinction
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit?
It remains to be seen if the administration doesn't successfully steal future elections, but the vitriol against data centers is a rare thing that has huge bipartisan support. Texas of all places largely has a competitive governor's race because Republicans have stated they're willing to vote for the Democratic candidate because she has supported a moratorium on data centers while Abbott supports them.
In this case, there is a 25 year old regulation that specifies what this program applies to and what it doesn’t. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
You might be fine with skirting the technicalities, but the rest of us have to live here and breathe the air.
That’s not how laws work, especially the Clean Air Act. “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” (https://ozgengungor.medium.com/one-of-those-quotes-thomas-so...).
The Clean Air Act was not designed to achieve cleaner air at any cost, but instead to achieve targeted pollution control that would have the greatest value at acceptable cost. The modern structure of the act was set in place in 1970 under Nixon, and is full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
You will notice we are not talking "at any cost". We are talking about a very specific cost to AI hyperscalers.
> full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
These technicalities are being exploited for the benefit of approximately 10 people, and to the detriment of everyone else.
Your talking points are old and exhausted.
Legislative compromises aren’t “technicalities.” The exceptions are as much a part of the laws as any other part. If they didn’t exist the laws wouldn’t have passed in the first place.
> Your talking points are old and exhausted
Your talking points—treating law as just an expression of intent rather than a reticulated framework—are third world mentality.
No, in first world countries we follow the letter of the law, including exceptions.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
Since congress can't do that anymore, to maintain a functional civilization we have to turn minor loopholes in the original law into load-bearing aspects of an industrial society.
Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
For a genuine off-grid use case (eg: very rural locations), they could add a new exemption which allows installations up to X kW capacity per site where local grid connections do not exist. Set X large enough that it won't negatively impact applications like cabins or nature retreats, but small enough that it's not useful to a large operator like a datacentre.
Of course, this all requires a functional Congress... so good luck.
No need for the FUD.
It would just mean the backup generator connected to the sewage lift station must meet emissions regulations, like in every developed country on earth.
If you’re trying to say there are simply some generators that can’t meet emissions standards, I’m going to say you just aren’t trying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_scrubber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_catalytic_reduction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_emissions_monitorin...
(et. al.)
There’s no reason at all that “generator” can’t be batteries rated for x hours, or a small generator that IS emissions certified.
I.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/Generator/comments/1hydy6j/recommen...
Many non-emergency generators are used because there is no grid to connect to and/or the power requirements are not anticipated to be permanent. The cost of a grid connection can greatly exceed anything justified by the use case.
There are entire industries that live off of large portable generators for non-emergency purposes because it is the only way to get power where you need it.
My reading of the EPA's statement here is they also wanted to mildly warn the companies that if they ever in the future want to contemplate connecting to the grid (eg. to bring down costs), they should be aware that bypassing compliance now could have expensive consequences for them later. Of course, Congress (local or federal) could also change the law in the much shorter term, so there's risk to them either way if they design without any forward thought for how to comply. On the other hand, if this inquiry to the EPA was merely requesting clarity on whether they are exempt from the reporting paperwork, but are using otherwise standard and compliant designs, then maybe the law is already working generally as intended.
They will if they think they can bribe government to give them exemptions to the new rules or they think they can cash out and leave someone else holding the bag before that happens.
Diesel generators are the standard for power generation where a grid connection is not readily available and/or the power needs are temporary (e.g. emergency backups). Cheap, easy logistics, and durable. This use case has always been allowed in practice because there is no practical alternative. Many industries rely on diesel generators for reliable site power.
It doesn't apply to natural gas power plants such as those used in data center builds at all because they don't produce this type of pollution.
I fail to see the big deal. This guidance appears to clarify the language so that it matches actual practice and intent.
idk how much NOx a GW or two of low efficiency (20%) gas turbine units produces, how wide that plume might be, and what the envionmental impact might be. but if we employed a few people that practice doing this kind of I'm sure they could tell us with high confidence.
These criteria were last amended in 2001, so the EPA is just applying a 25 year old regulation here.
Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
We have state regulations that could solve this if they wanted to.
Whereas natural gas generators do not.
Hence the runs on gas turbines, while solar panels are plentiful. ( Although I'd guess the consistency of power is a bigger issue. )
Running existing coal is now supposedly more expensive then putting in new wind or solar ... all else being equal.
I for one would love a nice HTTP status in the form of "due to the weather being nice and calm outside, AI services are down, go outside and enjoy the day"
Easier to just install a gas generator then
If there wasn’t such a hardware squeeze and electricity was a higher percentage of the cost, yes, it would have made sense.
Why do you think that’s likely?
China is building lots of new coal generation, but also lots of new solar so coal use will be reduced during daylight (not the way a coal plant wants to run, but they'll adapt)
Give it a few more years and data centers with onsite coal will look like a genius cost cutting idea. Never mind all the pollution.
[1] https://ieefa.org/resources/nowhere-go-down-us-coal-capacity...
The numbers keep getting worse. Building "onsite coal" is more expensive than solar and storage, but now it needs more expensive fuel and you need to dispose of the toxic coal ash which won't be free either.
They're coupling them with dedicated natural gas power plants. Meta finally stopped the green charade and simply dropped out of RE100, as they're all just going full speed ahead on destroying the planet.