XAI Using Dozens Of Unpermitted Gas Turbines To Power MS Datacenter; EPA Regulations . . Oh Who The Fuck Am I Kidding?
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its datacenters with unpermitted gas turbines, an investigation by the Floodlight newsroom shows. Thermal footage captured by Floodlight via drone shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.
State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long maintained that such pollution sources require permits under the Clean Air Act. Any exemption for these machines “could leave these engines subject to no emission standards at all”, the agency wrote in a January final ruling. However, thermal images captured by Floodlight – and analyzed by multiple experts – show more than a dozen unpermitted turbines still spewing pollutants at the plant nearly two weeks after the EPA’s recent ruling.
“That is a violation of the law,” said Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, after reviewing Floodlight’s images and EPA regulations. “You’re supposed to get permission first.” xAI, which is seeking permits for dozens more turbines in Southaven, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The EPA, which under Trump has initiated a record-low number of enforcement actions, declined to answer questions about the turbines at Musk’s AI facilities and referred to local authorities on permits.
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The Southaven turbine cluster is part of xAi’s rapidly growing footprint along the Tennessee-Mississippi border. That expansion began in the spring of 2024 in South Memphis, next to historically Black neighborhoods, which often disproportionately bear the brunt of pollution from nearby plants, with the construction of Colossus 1, which the company touted as the world’s largest AI supercomputer. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) released thermal images in April revealing that xAi had been operating more than 30 unpermitted gas-powered turbines at that site. “We were hopeful that the health department would step in,” said Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at the SELC. “That never happened.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi
