xAI has added 19 pure fuel generators to its second information middle campus in Southhaven, Mississippi, over the previous two months, in response to inside emails seen by WIRED.
The additions come as xAI is combating a lawsuit from the NAACP and a number of other environmental teams, alleging that the corporate is violating the Clear Air Act by working greater than two dozen pure fuel generators on the website with out applicable air permits.
Emails between an official within the Mississippi Division of Environmental High quality and a consultant from Trinity Consultants, obtained through a public information request by the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart and shared with WIRED, present that xAI put in 19 transportable fuel generators on its website in Southaven between late March and early Might. That brings the full to 46 generators working on the website.
A spreadsheet included within the e-mail to MDEQ, has a column labeled “Whole Energy Output” that seems to record the megawatt capability of every turbine on the positioning. xAI seems to have added greater than 500 megawatts of pure fuel generators since mid-March.
Burning pure fuel can launch planet-warming emissions and worsen air high quality. Officers on the MDEQ and xAI didn’t reply to WIRED’s request for remark. The additions of the brand new generators to the positioning, dubbed Colossus 2, had been first reported by Mississippi At the moment.
“As indicated by the ability, all transportable/momentary generators are geared up with management know-how to attenuate emissions,” company spokesperson Jan Schaefer informed Mississippi At the moment. “MDEQ is evaluating the scenario and can make the ability conscious as to when it may possibly not carry further transportable/momentary generators on-site.”
In April, the NAACP, together with the SELC and Earthjustice, filed a lawsuit in opposition to xAI, alleging that the corporate had been working a “private energy plant” in Southaven by working 27 fuel generators with out the required permits. Ben Grillot, a lawyer with SELC, says that the group seen six further generators on the website throughout a drone flyover in April. Solely after getting the MDEQ emails did the group understand there have been 19 new generators. In keeping with the dates on the e-mail seen by WIRED, eight of the 19 new generators, representing greater than 200 megawatts of output, had been put in after the lawsuit was filed.
The unique xAI website, Colossus 1, positioned over the state border in Memphis, Tennessee, acquired widespread criticism in 2024 after locals alleged that fuel generators at that website had been being run with out a allow. Colossus 1 sits in Boxtown, a traditionally Black neighborhood which has lengthy had issues with dangerous air high quality.
Regulators in each Tennessee and Mississippi have mentioned that as a result of xAI’s generators are usually not stationary, it has a yr to function them with out permits underneath the Clear Air Act. Final July, Memphis’s native well being division granted a permit for the generators on the Colossus 1 website, regardless of intense neighborhood opposition. In March, confronted with related neighborhood outcry, the MDEQ granted an air allow for the Southaven website to run 41 fuel generators. (SELC says that the 27 generators in its lawsuit and those added to the positioning in latest months are usually not a part of this allow. Neither xAI nor the MDEQ answered WIRED’s questions on whether or not the generators listed within the emails are lined by the air allow granted in March.) Drone footage and public information obtained by news outlet Floodlight present that a number of generators on the website had been working within the weeks earlier than the MDEQ granted the allow.
