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After heaps of criticism, SpaceX said it’ll remove the dozens of fumes-belching gas turbines it’s using to power its gargantuan data centers near Memphis, Tennessee — which it’s been using without a permit — a year from now.
In an update on its website spotted by TechCrunch, the Elon Musk-owned company laid out its plan to hook up the sprawling AI facilities, some of the largest in the world, to a 1.2 gigawatt nantural gas power plant.
Credit where credit’s due: it’s an improvement over the dismal status quo. But it’ll take a while, and in the meantime the company plans to continue to use its preponderance of 69 portable gas turbines that were trucked in to sustain its data centers. It won’t fully remove them until July 2027, a full year from now.
“We care deeply about being good neighbors and we regularly reconfigure power operations to reduce noise from the facility and minimize our impact on the local Southaven community,” the company said.
The “Colossus” data center campus, comprising two separate data centers, has come under fire from locals and activist groups. The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the NAACP, sued xAI — which is now known as SpaceXAI, after being rolled into Musk’s rocket company prior to its initial public offering — for operating the turbines without a permit and spewing harmful pollutants.
At the time, the lawsuit estimated that the gas turbines could emit more than 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitric oxides every year. It also claimed that the turbines release hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde, a known carcinogen linked to lung and nasal cancer that can also inflame airways.
In May, Politico reported that the data center had become one of the largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides in the county, where smog levels were already considered unhealthy before the facility went online.
Some parents in nearby communities have complained that their children have developed respiratory problems since the facility went online. And residents in the predominantly black neighborhood of Boxtown say that the fumes are so oppressive that it’s making it hard for them to breathe.
More on data centers: Data Center Emits Constant Screeching Noise Directly Into Man’s House