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.
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?
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...
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.
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 people who already the most powerful in check. Rejecting democracy is begging for the powerful to tell you what's right and wrong.
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.
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.
Well, if you juuust let the rich get richer, something (intentionally left unspecified) will trickle down on you.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
These criteria were last amended in 2001, so the EPA is just applying a 25 year old regulation here.
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.
We have state regulations that could solve this if they wanted to.
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.
Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
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.
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.
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"
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...
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.
Rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.
Yeah, that guy who owns a liquor store on 7-mil and can't make the $100k underground stormwater treatment it would take to pave his dirt parking lot pencil out and that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site, all their grievances are illegitimate, they're just simping for billionares and BigCos who wanna dump crap in the river.
People looking down their nose and categorically denying that there is collateral damage when you wave the wand of legislation is a large part of how the current populist got elected.
The one that's about to whine and demand Federal assistance when their water gets cut off because it ran out?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/climate/colorado-river-wa...
Edit:
They had a facility with a rail siding. Cheaper to relocate to a new site with expansion potential in another state than pay the state a million bucks an acre to let them fill in wetland (a ~100yo mill pond). The city did what they could to facilitate things but it basically just came down to the discretion of the state officials who live a few hundred miles away amongst all sort of moneyed tech and medical and finance industry and don't really see any upside to economic development in the poor end of the state, especially manufacturing. We're just a line item on the welfare bill as far are they care.
The real cherry on top is that the wetland went away "naturally" as the result of a low head dam removal a few years ago, at the behest of the same agency that said you can't fill in any of the mill pond.
The site is still vacant. It got sold to a REIT that's headquartered a couple blocks from the statehouse and environmental agency. Supposedly Waste Management or Republic Services wants to buy the old site now for it's rail siding and development potential.
The former sounds like a guy being told his trash needs to be picked up and not being able to afford it so not being allowed to generate trash, and the latter was provided with no details at all so I can't evaluate it.
I chose 7-mile for my hypothetical example because the road is an absolute goldmine for "you can't do that these days it's too dense" site plans and there's at least one liquor store with a dirt lot on it but I don't recall where. The "we want to make it nicer but it's not worth the stormwater treatment cost" example is from a business down the street from me. These things get stopped at the engineer/lawyer phase when the true costs become known to the owner.
Basically all the stormwater rules BS come at the expense of incentivizing sprawl. Doesn't really matter if you're walking past 1000ft of strip mall or 500ft of fancy multi level retail with a parking garage in back with 250ft of empty grass on either side, you're still 1000ft from the bus stop.
Nobody's interests, except some spreadsheet pusher who's missing the big picture, and some idiot ideologues, are effectively served by putting a ton of "built to the bare minimum" green space that the users don't actually want anywhere the economic potential of the land supports more density of actual use. And if you have that density there's more than enough money kicking around to manage your stormwater more cheaply than piecemeal private solutions (basically all the same pro/con as septic vs sewer but with less digits in front of the decimal).
Yeah it's nice to have parks and recreational green space, but those are planned to be fit for that purpose. The catchment basin behind the shopping center's parking garage is only fit for making the parties that got to construct and maintain it a little richer.
At the end of the day has very little to do with MAGA(TM) or Liberals(TM). They're just the current characters in a script that's been played a bunch of times. Kinda like how you can set the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet in any century. From the Tea Party to the Ron Paul thing to the Bernie bros to MAGA the populist movements will keep arising so long as the "we know what's best we're so smart" crowd continues to do things at the expense of the average person. Whether that's back handed environmentalism or facilitating monopolistic big business (or both, for these two examples often go hand in hand) doesn't really matter. The average person doesn't like it even if they can't quite articulate why. And so the populists will keep coming, until one day one shows up that the system can't de-fang. Who knows what'll happen then but I'd bet a lot of money we won't get a stronger EPA or a more favorable environment for big business out of it.
And those people are the ones making these bifurcated rules undermining the EPA. The destruction is the purpose, it's not incidental
This is the playbook generally - PE vulturism, but for government agencies. And to their credit it kinda works. Just… not for citizens of the country they have sworn to protect.
Currently in progress at GSA, OPM, CFPB (for a decade+), Interior, EPA, labor, education… Nevermind I should’ve started with an exclusion list instead.
Edit: actually since the 1st term as mentioned below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_fi...
The beginning of the end of the EPA started the day Trump was sworn in. In the last few years several cases have been decided by this Supreme Court that have effectively reduced the EPA to an advisory board, like a group of consultants that have no real authority over anything.
You're neithersidesing an issue where clearly one partisan group is doing evil things to actively make the situation worse and then "see, told you!"
Hand-waving dismissiveness doesn't serve when there were, in fact, significant (and yet not sufficient) efforts written into law.
We can have better things, but we as a people certainly need to do better. There are Mamdanis and there are Trumps. There's a difference.
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Compression
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
No because they were extremely rich and lived in massive houses set far back from the city streets filled with polluting cars and well away from factories spewing poison into the air. They've lived perfectly comfortable lives in climate controlled and filtered spaces and traveled around to beautiful remote areas where poor people can never go and the pollution had barely touched. They know that they and their families can buy a comfortable and safe life no matter how miserable and sick they make the rest of us. They will always have healthy food and clean water no matter how many of us don't.
Our government works best when it's "of the people" but instead the octogenarians in power have almost nothing in common with us (even most of us here, in a forum filled with very wealthy people) and so their interests are not our interests and our concerns are not shared by them.
Lead causes brain damage and memory impairment...
Brought you proudly by Thomas Midgley, Jr., who solved science problems by making bigger ones.
- https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/thomas-midgley-and-t...
That doesn't make much sense to me. It would be more profitable to sell gasoline without lead tetraethyl because you wouldn't be forced to buy a patented product. Just pour a shot of pure grain spirit in your tank on every refill (or however much is needed).
It's more plausible that engine technology today has improved to the point that ethanol alone can eliminate knocking.
No, lead poisoning makes you a brain damaged retard. They can probably hardly remember shit.
Please, the correct word is "value". Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.
The EPA provided guidance that the CAA (Clean Air Act) itself was written to not apply in these cases.
Shouldn't you be angry at the authors of the law?
Utterly impossible to get them to write a dishonest guidance document interpreting the law in a way that benefits them somehow.
You got me. Check mate. No counterarguments here.
From 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(17)(A) [1] which defines the power generation units that are covered by the law:
"(17) (A)The term “utility unit” means— (i)a unit that serves a generator in any State that produces electricity for sale, or (ii)a unit that, during 1985, served a generator in any State that produced electricity for sale."
The key phrasing there is "for sale". The clarification from the EPA simply restated that these units don't fall under the regulatory authority because under a plain reading of the law, they are not generating power for sale. [2]
The EPA certainly cites Trump's power agenda several times, but that doesn't make the plain text interpretation of the law wrong.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7411
[2] https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-issues-permitting-guida...
Just to add on, not voting in decided states is appealing for the winning party as well as the losing party.
Personally, I think a nationwide popular vote would be a logistical disaster, especially in the modern era of alternative facts.
Again, no. 49.8% is not a majority. It is a plurality.
Carter had to sell his peanut farm. Trump makes billions each year.
So the leap is: an old survey form says "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public," therefore anything not grid-connected isn't a sale to the public.
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, or other statutory exemptions. And there are grid-connected plants serving a single customer so why the distinction?
Why the 1990 form? Congress froze it into the statute so a survey agency couldn't rewrite Clean Air Act coverage by editing a questionnaire. EPA is now exploiting that freeze by treating the form's obsolete boilerplate as substantive law; a taxonomy EIA itself abandoned, since modern EIA-860 covers essentially all generators above 1 MW, grid or not.
It's as if Congress defined citizenship by reference to a 1990 Census form, and the agency decided who's a citizen by parsing the instruction booklet.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference, this "interpretation" won't survive litigation, though the memo's "not final agency action" disclaimer means challengers may have to wait for an actual permitting decision to sue.
That’s how law works.
I grew up in the 70s, and my father was a Nixon supporting environmental engineer. At the time the amount of nitrogen and sulfur being emitted into the air in the northeast was turning surface water into acid. a ph of 6 was getting quite common, 4 wasn't unusual, and if you were in a bad spot it was approaching 1. Not only would that water not support life, or be unsafe to drink, but it was actually unsafe to touch.
So if we were reasonable people we would look at the economic activity and the upside of burning these gasses, and add up the numbers and based on past experience make a very reasonable estimate of the impact, and make a decision.
but we fired all those people, and we're very much not interested in having this discussion. I fail to see how that's a win for anyone except the polluter.
> "In particular, while a “utility” under ARP regulations includes any person that sells electricity, the 1990 edition of DOE Form 860 only covers those electricity generators who sell “electric energy primary [sic] for use by the public.”
Said "1990 edition of DOE Form 860" is included on page 8 of the pdf, and it very clearly reads "primarily"; not "primary". As is proper English.
It is more reliable (due to many possible generation sources). It is more eco-friendly (solar in daytime, wind when the wind blows). It is more cost efficient (no need to overbuild for peak usage, generators don't sit idle when computers are off for maintenance).
Yet our electricity grid has such a mass of regulations attached that people are choosing to lose these benefits - and with it we lose the benefit of them connecting to our grid.
States rights is not why there are issues with the power grid
EDIT: I should add, states DO also regulate electric utilities but generally that is around local issues like charging rates to customers. the bulk electric system (transmission and generation) is largely the domain of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Depends. Getting a grid connection, and all the equipment to connect and step down with negotiating prices is not always fun. Especially as there is a limited amount of power on the grid. its not a free lunch and takes time.
Its far easier to just slap shitty local generators on and live off the crappy noisy electricity they provide.
Reads to me as going for a quick & dirty fix.
Attaching to the grid, at the powers desired, in the locations desired involves years of waiting beyond construction. Onsite genetation can be built within the overall construction timeline.
Maybe poor site selection, but I'm sure there's a cost optimization there. And my understanding is that there's not a whole lot of excess grid capacity around the country at the moment. Utilities are spending a lot of resources on changing the mix of generation and wildfire mitigation and don't have a lot of resources for adding generation capacity beyond what is immediately needed or increasing interconnection capacity.
This is different than the data center boom in the .com era; site selection was different, the grid situation was different, and the data centers being built were smaller loads.
There are lots of businesses and homes with onsite generation for various reasons, and most of them run for less than 100 hours per year. Not a lot of reason to add a reporting requirement and a strong emissions requirement.
Focusing on large scale generation was a good choice (that has worked for decades).
In an ideal world, congress would see this and adapt the rules to apply here as well. Probably an hour limit or a capacity limit or some combination would be a better discriminator than for public use.
Come to live in Europe and you will see how nice it is to stagnate because rule A depends on rule B, but there is an exception C that requires D....
Death by a thousand cuts.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/epa-says-power-data...
Just adding more fuel to one of the brightest fires out there in politics right now. Expect it to continue and grow as people feel even less heard, and any negative media towards data centers gets lots of clicks.
The AI companies and Trump seem to be doing everything they can to encourage this.
There's definitely something more fitting out there than "Environmental Protection Agency".
Why this is, I don't know. I suspect it's because the vast, vast, majority of non-connected generators were, (until now,) backup generators that only ran occasionally. I even have a "fancy" portable generator in my garage that probably emits way more pollution per kwh than a typical fossil fuel plant, but I probably only run it ~10 hours a year at most.
What's more disappointing is that this loophole is being promoted instead of closed; but everyone here seems to think that laws were weakened.
Also I mean what constitutes a generator if it isn't something connected to the grid? If my car has an engine and it also has a small inverter and an AC outlet is that now a generator and subject to generator laws in addition to car laws?
We're in an existential crisis and instead of stepping up to a leadership role, they are actively sabotaging efforts to avert disaster.
Shameful.
[chaos] [corruption] [cruelty]
November and the "AI" collapse cannot come soon enough
but if the Dems don't get the Senate nothing will change even in the slightest
The problem was never power or water (water being a known Chinese spy op after Karen Hao was caught exaggerating water usage by 1,000x in her book).
Correct. The problem isn't just data centers or power or water, it's that left unchecked these greedy people will risk the power grid, drain rivers/reservoirs/aquifers, and destroy our natural environment (and cities) with pollution because it's more profitable than doing things the right way. I think more than anything we want responsible, friendly neighbors who are mindful of the impact they have in the areas where they operate.
They're callous, reckless, have no concern for anything but their money. And "self-funded" isn't even true, the tax breaks and negative externalities of these data centers will be paid by the people (see: xAI and Memphis.)
inb4 i'm a chinese operative because I mentioned water. Get bent, I think grass farmers in the desert should be forced to get real jobs instead of exporting our water to China/Saudi Arabia as cattle feed. And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
Second, in many places power is a problem with AI data centers that do want grid power. I don't think you realize just how many new AI data center projects there are and how much more power they use than a normal data center. Combined with the short timeline these projects want they need grid expansion far beyond what anyone had in their long term grid planning.
Why don't you want an auto repair shop in the house next door, and why won't you let them pour old engine oil on your lawn? Are you anti-car-repair? All your "noise and pollution" complaints sound like psy ops to me, paid for by the Chinese EV industry.
^ that's what you sound like.
This is not about Trump. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about people who have the money who control all of those people. The AI play is nothing but pure greed. They don’t want to make your life better. They’re actively making your life. worse while they’re getting rich.
So, work from home, but you'll need a new home.
What will even pay for it? Not the proceeds from your old home which now nobody wants to buy.