xAI has added 19 pure fuel generators to its second information heart campus in Southhaven, Mississippi, over the previous two months, in accordance with inside emails seen by WIRED.
The additions come as xAI is preventing 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 web site with out acceptable air permits.
Emails between an official within the Mississippi Division of Environmental High quality and a consultant from Trinity Consultants, obtained by way of a public information request by the Southern Environmental Regulation Heart and shared with WIRED, present that xAI put in 19 transportable fuel generators on its web site in Southaven between late March and early Could. That brings the full to 46 generators working on the web site.
A spreadsheet included within the e mail to MDEQ has a column labeled “Whole Energy Output” that seems to listing the megawatt capability of every turbine on the location. 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 location, dubbed Colossus 2, have been first reported by Mississippi At this time.
“As indicated by the ability, all transportable/short-term generators are outfitted with management expertise to reduce emissions,” company spokesperson Jan Schaefer informed Mississippi At this time. “MDEQ is evaluating the scenario and can make the ability conscious as to when it may possibly not convey further transportable/short-term 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 mandatory permits. Ben Grillot, a lawyer with SELC, says that the group seen six further generators on the web site throughout a drone flyover in April. Solely after getting the MDEQ emails did the staff notice there have been 19 new generators. Based on the dates on the e-mail seen by WIRED, eight of the 19 new generators, representing greater than 200 megawatts of output, have been put in after the lawsuit was filed.
The unique xAI web site, Colossus 1, situated over the state border in Memphis, Tennessee, acquired widespread criticism in 2024 after locals alleged that fuel generators at that web site have been being run and not using a allow. Colossus 1 sits in Boxtown, a traditionally Black neighborhood that 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 aren’t stationary, it has a 12 months to function them with out permits beneath the Clear Air Act. Final July, Memphis’ native well being division granted a permit for the generators on the Colossus 1 web site, regardless of intense neighborhood opposition. In March, confronted with comparable neighborhood outcry, the MDEQ granted an air allow for the Southaven web site to run 41 fuel generators. (SELC says that the 27 generators in its lawsuit and those added to the location in latest months aren’t 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 coated 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 web site have been working within the weeks earlier than the MDEQ granted the allow.
