Comment by burningion
4 months ago
or... maybe there's something to people being skeptical of datacenters?
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/musks-xai-opera...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...
> In just 11 months since the company arrived in Memphis, xAI has become one of Shelby County’s largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides, according to calculations by environmental groups whose data has been reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News. The plant is in an area whose air is already considered unhealthy due to smog.
Had this set the precedent of working with the community, and _not_ breaking the law, I think we'd be in a better place all around.
Similarly, Amazon tried to take the excess nuclear power, without paying back into the electrical grid infrastructure, and got denied in 2024:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-interconnection-isa-ta...
and again in April of 2025:
https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-16/article-6937/ferc-denies...
Yeah, that politico article conveniently leaves out that the TVA - the local electricity provider - runs a methane-powered gas power plant literally 200 meters down the road (which replaced a much dirtier coal-burning power station at the same location), but somehow could not be bothered actually hooking their neighbours up to the grid.
I presume they couldn't be bothered hooking their "neighbors" [0] up because the demand was too great, no...?
[0] "Neighbors" here means a datacenter primarily processing data for wealthy people outside of the community and their mega-companies, where the revenue from that processing primarily goes... also to wealthy people outside of the community and their mega-companies...
Edit: Ah yes, that is exactly the case [https://memphischamber.com/blog/press-release/xai-phase-one-...]. While xAI is fronting the cash, the entire upgrade will ultimately be paid for by taxpayers in the form of monthly rebates.
Datacenters are not things that just randomly appear. There are planning processes, and city stakeholders are involved - which would include the TVA. The fact that they built the thing is a good indication that the stakeholders agreed this project should go forward - and that would involve an agreement on power provisioning.
But what I strongly disagree with in the politico article is that the datacenter is framed as a major polluter when the whole area is heavy industry, including a steel works and - a methane-burning power plant. To put the blame now on the xAI site smells a lot like an anti-Musk hit piece.
Doesn't mean I like the guy. I just like my journalism honest.
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