Right, I can only imagine the most foolish DC operators are excited about this. Just more gas on the political fire, when DCs should be boring and out of public politics, even if they rank 15th for water consumption and 8th for energy consumption.
The bipartisan opinion shift towards absolute hate for data centers was extremely fast.
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.
Thank you. This seems like a pretty straight-forward clarification of current law. The current thread title (OP said taken from Reuters) saying this side-steps the law seems misleading.
The entire argument rests on a 36 year old survey form that says "DOE Form 860 (1990) defines electric utility to mean “a corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality
that owns and/or operates facilities within the United States for the generation, transmissions, distribution, or sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public.”"
So the leap is--
old survey form has a definition of "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public"
therefore, anything not grid connected is not "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public".
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, other statutory exemptions...there also also power-plants attached to the grid that are only used for one customer. Why the distinction?
Also, why the 1990 form? Well, newer forms collect much more information, and so would not uphold even this slender narrative.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference this "interpretation" will be litigated very soon.
For sure, an argument can be made that the text of the law could be tightened up. In my opinion, there's nothing in that text that would exclude these generators. In addition the rationale provide for excluding these generators seems... disingenuous at best.
This is so amateurish. They misquote their own authorities, with grade-school grammar errors:
> "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.
There are big benefits to having power generation grid connected.
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.
Those regulations are there for a reason though. I’ll never understand this logic. We have regulations so things are clean and safe. Yes, it would be easier to not have those regulations and just have dirty and unsafe electricity. But that’s the cost of having a business and also having a clean and safe society. Corporations love to externalize costs and that’s what’s happening here again.
Becoming and staying a leader in innovation sometimes requires shortcuts. You can also frame a law to make that exception specific for an industry, a field or a group so it doesn't become the norm (or time box it, if you want). You need innovation, there is no other way USA can lead in AI if you don't build these damn data centers.
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....
The exemption for non-public generators is there for a reason too.
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.
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.
It's ironic when data center operators, who I'd expect to be experts on calculating complex cost/benefit scenarios, check for & arrange what's needed, sidestep better solutions because there's a bunch of requirements attached.
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.
I'm not an expert in the US grid, but where I am, the grid moves at a different pace.
It also has a bunch of constraints that are not that appealing. For example there is a strict supply limit. You can't just attach 4x6MW connections in a few weeks. More over, that kind of cable is £900 a meter, at the least. Its also oil filled and needs a bunch of other infra to keep it cold.
Then, the lead time for transformers is also quite high. I'm not sure about the switch gear and meters though.
Once you have all that, you need to make sure your local spur of the grid has enough capacity to provide what you need.
Then you can bid for a connection. THe further away you are from the grid the more it costs.
Hmm... rules for thee but not for me. Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA. Two tiered rules breed resentment. There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA. Making exceptions just makes it easier to argue the EPA is useless or just a tool for oppressing the little guy.
>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.
> 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
The one that's about to whine and demand Federal assistance when their water gets cut off because it ran out?
Framing Trump/MAGA as some kind of divine retribution against the sins of liberals great! All bad things are caused by liberals, because MAGA is mere reaction to their actions. MAGA have no mind of their own, and thus no responsibility for their own actions.
These same types of evil people exist in droves on the right too. They just circle jerk about different topics and peddle different forms of progressivism (lowercase P!!). Right now the establishment is somewhat catering to them, much to the chagrin of the useful idiots who are all in on the other team. They were the ones screeching all throughout the last administration.
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.
The so-called "Tea Party" was not a "populist movement". It was a billionaire-funded (notably by the Koch brothers, but also by fossil fuel and tobacco companies) astroturf operation.
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.
Why is it any different from "we want an asphalt parking lot but it's not worth the asphalt cost" or "we want a giant sign but the pole to hang it on is too expensive" or "we want an asphalt parking lot but renting the machine to paint the lines is too expensive" or "we want to be open 24/7 but we can't afford to cover third shift"?
Because this is a constraint we've imposed upon ourselves to the detriment of the public. It's like how you have all sorts of workplaces with absolutely moronic rats nests of extension cords and power strips and whatnot because you don't need a permit to plug stuff in. They're following the rule and arriving at a stupider worse solution and we're all poorer for it. We could literally be richer at the stroke of a pen. Whereas to make paving cheaper we'd need to make technological progress.
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.
It's all bullshit. I get the whole sponge principal. It's make-work bullshit to make everyone do all this BS when it would be infinitely more efficient to solve this stuff wholesale on a municipal level and reap the benefits of letting property development be constrained by one less requirement to shovel money at certain people.
Same basic argument in favor of municipal sewer over super fancy super high cost septic systems.
Aquifer replenishment isn't a concern in many states so that's a non-issue as far as I care, let the places who need to deal with it deal with it.
Municipal level stuff is highly constrained in the US because most suburban municipalities are bleeding money - they're either propped up by an urban core, or they're bankrupt and already letting vital services rot.
Paying third shift a minimum wage is also a constraint we imposed on ourselves to the detriment of the public. Is it overreach when a store owner wants to be open 24/7, but can only afford to pay third shift $0.07 an hour and then government won't let him?
That's because the EPA is being run/bribed by rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Intentionally breaking something so that they can complain about how broken it is and push to eliminate it or replace it with something more favorable to them is a very old trick but it remains popular because there are gullible people who still fall for it.
And this same behavior is how Republicans prove their own theory that the Government is useless and evil and bad. Because they do everything in their power to actually make it useless and evil and bad. Do not blame this on the "EPA" as an agency. Put the blame where it goes: conservatives actively sabotaging government programs.
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!"
> Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA
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.
First they say data centers should pay their own way on power infrastructure, then when they start springing up entirely off-grid and fully self-funded power infrastructure, suddenly there's a new problem.
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).
You're saying multiple wrong ways to do a thing is evidence that the thing is undesirable?
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.
The environmental impacts of how that power is generated is not a sudden or new concern, it was a concern even if the power was delivered via the grid or not and the fact that the power is generated on site or whatever does not alleviate that concern
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.
>And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, you want to export the negative externalities of a theoretical water shortage to poor countries who will move to replace the food gap caused by farmers shutting down.
It is not a new problem. Look at Musk's Tennessee data centers to see the problems with off-grid data centers that don't have good pollution controls.
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.
The trouble I have with this argument is that you can look at almost anything Musk does and make an argument like this. He's discredited AI, data centers, cars, space exploration, biotechnology, you name it.
Yes, Musk's data centers are apparently abominable. I'll show up to rally for a statute preventing Musk from building more data centers. But I don't think the evidence is good that most data centers are like this, and I do think that rapid grid expansion --- which is going to happen one way or the other, the only question is where --- is an opportunity blue-staters like us should be seizing to modernize the grid and impose some controls.
Andy Masley, who's more responsible than anyone else for debunking the idea that data centers abuse water resources, has been a broken record for the past month on Twitter saying that he doesn't buy into this "Chinese spy op" stuff at all. It doesn't even make sense as an operation. It's not like the data centers aren't going to get built; they'll just get built in different parts of the country. Why would China care?
According to this administration, there isn't one. They have told us this for years, but I guess nobody believed them??? It just took someone willing to not give a damn about working with others and just forcing their will upon others. After all, the people elected them and they are just carrying through with their well advertised plans.
They really accel at making people their supporters don't like, angry. To gleefully rub your hands together while your enemies cry is a dream for some.
Everyone is doing it all around you. We can mostly blame the people who make AI but we also have to blame everyone who’s using it. We can boycott AI until they make it safe and clean to use. Until then, everyone’s to blame that uses it or builds it.
Boycotts basically don't work unless you get a big percentage of the company's customers to simultaneously agree to boycott that company because they are really angry. Nobody's really angry at chatgpt.
This is exactly what the leadership wanted. And as they won the election. Not like in 2016 (where more people voted for the other guy but they won due to the difference in power of votes), or in 2020 (where they lost), they won a clear outright victory, it's exactly what the USA wanted.
I'm not sure it's fair to characterize 49.8% of the vote as a "clear outright victory". Harris got 48.3%; that's a pretty close to even split. The majority of voters didn't vote for this.
In theory the US has checks and balances. Ask 10 years ago if you could have a president selling national secrets via an api and you'd be laughed out of the room.
Carter had to sell his peanut farm. Trump makes billions each year.
It is nonsensical to consider popular vote numbers in an election not decided on the popular vote. How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable. I'm all for the presidency being decided by popular vote, but until it is there is no point using those statistically-flawed numbers in any debate.
> How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable.
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.
Is there a word for this behavior where a politician wins by the slimmest of margins in a first past the post election and then spins it as a mandate from The People instead of an incredibly tight split?
If you are talking about the billionaires and trillionaire who spent as much as they could to get this elected then you are correct it is what THEY wanted.
The law was specifically written to exclude things like independent power sources and backup generators etc...
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.
Let this sink in. Nobody cares about you and your children. They don’t care about the planet. These people are sociopaths. A lot of you work for these people. And a lot of you should stop working for these people. And if you’re using AI, you should stop using AI and you should make your boycott vocal.
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.
Beyond stupid. Why there are any "power generation" mechanisms that could produce air pollutantion in this decade is already incomprehensible. Making rules to allow for them on purpose is even dumber.
> Clean Air Act (CAA) Acid Rain Program (ARP) does not apply to power generation facilities that are not connected to a public electricity grid, commonly referred to as “islanded” power generation facilities.
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.
It literally is just a cartoon villain plan. The AI companies look at something called the "Acid Rain Program" and think to themselves "Fuck that, what's a bit of acid rain going to do?". I truly cannot comprehend the mindset here as hard as I try
Hoggish Greedly if memory serves. Regardless of one's politics Captain Planet is so campy it's fun to watch MST3K-style. Remember Linka from the Soviet Union? "Imperialist pigs!"
The AI companies look at something called the "endless government bureaucracy" and they think to themselves "fuck that, I'm not waiting 10 years for all that bullshit, I'll just use the loophole." I truly cannot comprehend any other reaction because I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
I would rather take /them/ going through fingernail ripping government bureaucracy for 10 years over /me/ having acid raid, but hey, I'm just a egoistical and don't see the Big Picture or something.
Government beauracracy, which provides things like democratic oversight, environmental protection, enforcing power grid standards and interoperability, construction regulations, etc? Would you rather we just didn't have those things?
It should be mind numbingly trivial to stand up a solar farm and ram through some transmission lines in the desert, and mind numbingly hard to set up a temporary gas generator. We needed regulatory exemptions yesterday for clean energy, public transit, and EV charging.
Oh it would be if AI actually made money. Turns out all those companies cheap out and don't actually want to put down the 20 billion for a nuclear reactor- which should be trivial if they were really the future!
They have billions of dollars, they're short on TIME.
They want computers in racks now and (rightfully imo) look at yearslong approval processes with disgust. Look at Ashburn, VA - they extract loads of money from these companies, and they keep getting investments because constructing new datacenters is easy thanks to state laws.
It's not about the money here it's about the time.
They don't care if you have to follow the rules either. Why don't you get mad about the fact that you are forced to obey all these idiotic rules instead of somebody else finding a way around them.
Yes, it does. If you want solar? You need lots of panels on lots of land far away from the DC. You need transmission lines connecting the two. You need to fight NEPA/CEQA/whatever lawsuits for each element of the plan, the local town councils of wherever the hell you're trying to build, and the worst part is that they aren't even required to give you an answer - they can drag out the approvals for years until you give up and leave.
Compare that to a gas turbine, which can be trucked in, plugged in, and running inside a few days. Yeah, I think we should take measures to limit gas turbine deployments and encourage companies to spend more of their money connecting renewables to the grid, but that means that they need to be able to do it quickly and without catering too much to local interests.
> The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
The rest of us are not installing 1MW gas turbines in our backyards. Even if we were, I don't think the current administration wants to enforce environmental rules on anyone unless it's to block renewables construction.
If we let China dump solar panels and batteries on us, we would be able to afford burning electricity for much more worthless things than training LLMs
All of them are good except for democratic oversight. Those other things are beneficial and cheap and easy to comply with. It's the democratic oversight of what gets built and where that is nothing more than a giveaway to worthless bureaucrats, lawyers, activists, and NIMBYs.
The alternative to democracy is wealthy guys who can buy their way into anything being done forcing their will upon the "worthless" rest of the populace, as you called them. If only billionaires weren't held up by the monsters that are activists protesting their activities and lawyers acting as a check on their legal power.
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 most powerful in check. Rejecting democracy is begging for someone who doesn't care about you to tell you what's right and wrong.
I get that anyway. It's just that in democracy it's a mob of millions of idiots who don't care about me. I guess I'd rather have it be the billionaires because at least they want to build things and advance our infrastructure and technology.
What you label "government bureaucracy" is very often environmental protections working as intended.
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.
Employees at the companies that do this stuff know exactly what these regulations are for and are violating them quite deliberately. They don't actually think it's "government bureaucracy" whatever they tell the public.
> I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
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.
Who is causing what here? If there is no demand for those services then the data center will sit there idle and cause no pollution. You can't consume services that cause pollution without accepting your share of the responsibility.
"Cartoon villainy" is the best possible way to describe this administration. I'm more than willing to accept lots of policy differences, but so many decisions just seem tailor made to fuck over 95%+ of the public. Like how could any sane person defend this?
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.
They are technicalities, because the intent of the law is clean air. A carve out for temporary generators is clearly not intended to allow megawatts of permanent generation to operate outside of the regulatory umbrella and abuse of it is allowing the rich to skate by on a technicality.
The Clean Air Act was not designed to achieve cleaner air at any cost, but instead to achieve targeted pollution control that would have the greatest value at acceptable cost. The modern structure of the act was set in place in 1970 under Nixon, and is full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
> These technicalities are being exploited for the benefit of approximately 10 people
Legislative compromises aren’t “technicalities.” The exceptions are as much a part of the laws as any other part. If they didn’t exist the laws wouldn’t have passed in the first place.
> Your talking points are old and exhausted
Your talking points—treating law as just an expression of intent rather than a reticulated framework—are third world mentality.
Huh??? The intent of the law is what the entire system and in the entire world is working nowadays, I mean in the real world - aka outside of the minds of the technocultists. This is exactly what the courts are doing everywhere, upholding the intent of the law, and also why legal AI is continuously failing at it - it can't figure out the intent among all edge cases and yeah technicalities.
I don't know why you must underline all that "first world" thing, it doesn't make your argument stronger. Please actually verify it, instead of blindly repeating slogans. Namely the courts may start with the letter, find subsequently the letter doesn't apply 100% because things and humans, then proceed to apply the spirit of the law the way they interpret it.
I think its so that like people don't need to do an EPA assessment for their home backup generator right? They are very common where I live due to the instability of the power grid.
Most generators not connected to the grid are for emergency backup purposes. Granted, this carve out is now clearly being abused, but the original intent is quite rational.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
> If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
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.
Some of the most effective emissions control equipment scales down very poorly. The bigger you can make the plant, the more viable these technologies become.
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.
And now we will have to add more bureaucracy and regulations to the process because of the tech bro's abuses of reasonable carveouts. More bureaucracy that future tech bros/right wingers will complain about existing even though they chose to force the matter to the point of regulation.
It seems pretty much how law (specifically common law) has always worked though. If Congress thinks the law should apply to them, then Congress's job is to write a law that applies to them. The president and judicial branches are not supposed to make new laws, but rather to enforce the laws as written.
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.
The effects of this will be reduced by the realization that these regulations can be changed in the future. No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
> No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
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.
This program targets acid rain. It only applies to coal and diesel. No one is building off-grid coal power plants.
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.
burning methane does produce NO and NO2 (the N2 being oxidized at temperature). that does come down with precipitation and collect in bodies of water. over time as evaporation removes the water and its replenished with acidic rain, the concentration increases arbitrarily high.
idk how much NOx a GW or two of low efficiency (20%) gas turbine units produces, how wide that plume might be, and what the envionmental impact might be. but if we employed a few people that practice doing this kind of I'm sure they could tell us with high confidence.
Its for the greater good. Net benefit would still be in data centers favour, as AI replaces useless office workers, it will lower carbon footprint of all those people commuting by car / needing to work in cities. More people living in nature in the country side, doing something productive in the new economy, growing their food. Just invest in banks, to ride out the transition.
What's frustrating is that the title in this thread is very misleading. This is the way the laws have been: Separate laws for generators feeding into the grid.
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.
I suspected that this was the case as the president can't just invent new laws on a whim. They have a fair amount of leeway on their interpretation of laws re: directions to the administration on how/when to do things but they can't just invent a law from thin air.
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?
They can, however, just refuse to enforce a law, or start enforcing the opposite of a law. While they may not be able to change the words on the page, the effect is identical.
The most ironic part of this is that data center pollution will impact Trump supporters the most. In 5-to-10 years, after swimming in the same river their parents and grandparents swam in, kids will start develop breathing complications or their teeth will fall out, and there won't be anything anyone can do about it. Congratulations, MAGA, you played yourself.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 20.1 ms ] thread[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.
So the leap is--
old survey form has a definition of "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public" therefore, anything not grid connected is not "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public".
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, other statutory exemptions...there also also power-plants attached to the grid that are only used for one customer. Why the distinction?
Also, why the 1990 form? Well, newer forms collect much more information, and so would not uphold even this slender narrative.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference this "interpretation" will be litigated very soon.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
It also has a bunch of constraints that are not that appealing. For example there is a strict supply limit. You can't just attach 4x6MW connections in a few weeks. More over, that kind of cable is £900 a meter, at the least. Its also oil filled and needs a bunch of other infra to keep it cold.
Then, the lead time for transformers is also quite high. I'm not sure about the switch gear and meters though.
Once you have all that, you need to make sure your local spur of the grid has enough capacity to provide what you need.
Then you can bid for a connection. THe further away you are from the grid the more it costs.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Considering how accessable the basics are, I'm having trouble believing your argument is in good faith.
Same basic argument in favor of municipal sewer over super fancy super high cost septic systems.
Aquifer replenishment isn't a concern in many states so that's a non-issue as far as I care, let the places who need to deal with it deal with it.
And those people are the ones making these bifurcated rules undermining the EPA. The destruction is the purpose, it's not incidental
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!"
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.
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).
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.
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.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, you want to export the negative externalities of a theoretical water shortage to poor countries who will move to replace the food gap caused by farmers shutting 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.
Yes, Musk's data centers are apparently abominable. I'll show up to rally for a statute preventing Musk from building more data centers. But I don't think the evidence is good that most data centers are like this, and I do think that rapid grid expansion --- which is going to happen one way or the other, the only question is where --- is an opportunity blue-staters like us should be seizing to modernize the grid and impose some controls.
Again, no. 49.8% is not a majority. It is a plurality.
Carter had to sell his peanut farm. Trump makes billions each year.
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.
That suggests more non-idiots voted Trump than Harris.
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...
yes
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.
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
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.
They want computers in racks now and (rightfully imo) look at yearslong approval processes with disgust. Look at Ashburn, VA - they extract loads of money from these companies, and they keep getting investments because constructing new datacenters is easy thanks to state laws.
It's not about the money here it's about the time.
Disgust of the rules for me but not for thee? The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
How about disgust for actual pollution? They could build clean, quiet and fast if "> It's not about the money here it's about the time."
It doesn't add up, like at all.
Yes, it does. If you want solar? You need lots of panels on lots of land far away from the DC. You need transmission lines connecting the two. You need to fight NEPA/CEQA/whatever lawsuits for each element of the plan, the local town councils of wherever the hell you're trying to build, and the worst part is that they aren't even required to give you an answer - they can drag out the approvals for years until you give up and leave.
Compare that to a gas turbine, which can be trucked in, plugged in, and running inside a few days. Yeah, I think we should take measures to limit gas turbine deployments and encourage companies to spend more of their money connecting renewables to the grid, but that means that they need to be able to do it quickly and without catering too much to local interests.
> The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
The rest of us are not installing 1MW gas turbines in our backyards. Even if we were, I don't think the current administration wants to enforce environmental rules on anyone unless it's to block renewables construction.
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 most powerful in check. Rejecting democracy is begging for someone who doesn't care about you to tell you what's right and wrong.
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.
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.
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?
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.
You might be fine with skirting the technicalities, but the rest of us have to live here and breathe the air.
That’s not how laws work, especially the Clean Air Act. “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” (https://ozgengungor.medium.com/one-of-those-quotes-thomas-so...).
The Clean Air Act was not designed to achieve cleaner air at any cost, but instead to achieve targeted pollution control that would have the greatest value at acceptable cost. The modern structure of the act was set in place in 1970 under Nixon, and is full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
You will notice we are not talking "at any cost". We are talking about a very specific cost to AI hyperscalers.
> full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
These technicalities are being exploited for the benefit of approximately 10 people, and to the detriment of everyone else.
Your talking points are old and exhausted.
Legislative compromises aren’t “technicalities.” The exceptions are as much a part of the laws as any other part. If they didn’t exist the laws wouldn’t have passed in the first place.
> Your talking points are old and exhausted
Your talking points—treating law as just an expression of intent rather than a reticulated framework—are third world mentality.
No, in first world countries we follow the letter of the law, including exceptions.
Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
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.)
There’s no reason at all that “generator” can’t be batteries rated for x hours, or a small generator that IS emissions certified.
I.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/Generator/comments/1hydy6j/recommen...
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.
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.
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.
idk how much NOx a GW or two of low efficiency (20%) gas turbine units produces, how wide that plume might be, and what the envionmental impact might be. but if we employed a few people that practice doing this kind of I'm sure they could tell us with high confidence.
We have state regulations that could solve this if they wanted to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM4H6Ix1Lt4
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?
People mistake carveouts or loopholes in the law for corruption.
This is a problem because it isnt conducive to actually identifying the problem and updating the law through a democratic process.
Same issue with flock cameras.
We're in an existential crisis and instead of stepping up to a leadership role, they are actively sabotaging efforts to avert disaster.
Shameful.
There's definitely something more fitting out there than "Environmental Protection Agency".