> 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
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.
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?
You're not thinking like a techbro. My startup shouldn't have to adhere to those regulations, but everyone else should. In fact, once my startup gets established we should make even more regulations
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.
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.
"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.
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 that is the original intent, why did that not get added into the law? Explicitly specififying that the exception only applies to emergency backup situations would have solved this, right?
My reasonable guess is that they did not want to make those case that need off-grid generation too hard to build. And never considered that anyone would build any actually significant amount of off-grid capacity. At certain threshold grid just makes economic sense. So rational actors would never do that.
Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?
Because congress passed the law in 1970 and did not expect we'd lose the ability to pass legislation that fixes minor problems with the original laws.
Since congress can't do that anymore, to maintain a functional civilization we have to turn minor loopholes in the original law into load-bearing aspects of an industrial society.
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.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to this President and his EPA that they are simply enforcing the laws as intended is foolish, irrational, and against all known evidence and their own words and policies and actions.
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.
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.
That might be a reason, but probably more relevant is the fact that when you want solar to provide all power for a data center, you need a lot of buffering capacity (batteries). And then you also need a back up for when the sun doesn't shine... Which is probably a gas generator.
AI training, not inference, seems like it would actually be a good application for a solar powered DC because you could just checkpoint and pause when it gets cloudy. It might end up worth it for the free electricity.
They should definitely use wind power, since you could use the fans to cool the computers at the same time!
I for one would love a nice HTTP status in the form of "due to the weather being nice and calm outside, AI services are down, go outside and enjoy the day"
If coal doesn't pencil out economically for the grid it still likely won't pencil out economically for data centers even if you remove some of the compliance stuff.
Fair enough, I don't know if it matters short term for massive buildouts, but I'm sure whatever comes out of this is not a benefit for anyone except the owners.
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.
Correct. The people that don’t like the EPA appointed their friends who also don’t like the EPA to run the EPA.
This is the playbook generally - PE vulturism, but for government agencies. And to their credit it kinda works. Just… not for citizens of the country they have sworn to protect.
Currently in progress at GSA, OPM, CFPB (for a decade+), Interior, EPA, labor, education… Nevermind I should’ve started with an exclusion list instead.
>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.
People looking down their nose and categorically denying that there is collateral damage when you wave the wand of legislation is a large part of how the current populist got elected.
> 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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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!"
Right? This isnt the first chapter in a long story to come. This is the middle of the book where the villain has all but the final stone of the gauntlet but rather than put up a strong resistance we appear to have elected sycophants who are just watching and saying “dont let him get that stone”
Clarification: During his first term, Donald Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his role as state attorney general, Pruitt had sued the EPA multiple times to challenge federal environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.
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.
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.
Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.
Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
Most of those octogenarians weren't responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you're 80 you came of age in the 60's, and you wouldn't have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.
This is so amateurish. This document misquotes its own authorities, with grade-school grammar mistakes:
> "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.
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: "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, transmission, distribution, or sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public.'"
So the leap is: an old survey form says "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public," therefore anything not grid-connected isn't a sale to the public.
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, or other statutory exemptions. And there are grid-connected plants serving a single customer so why the distinction?
Why the 1990 form? Congress froze it into the statute so a survey agency couldn't rewrite Clean Air Act coverage by editing a questionnaire. EPA is now exploiting that freeze by treating the form's obsolete boilerplate as substantive law; a taxonomy EIA itself abandoned, since modern EIA-860 covers essentially all generators above 1 MW, grid or not.
It's as if Congress defined citizenship by reference to a 1990 Census form, and the agency decided who's a citizen by parsing the instruction booklet.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference, this "interpretation" won't survive litigation, though the memo's "not final agency action" disclaimer means challengers may have to wait for an actual permitting decision to sue.
its very much using the letter to violate the spirit - since the pollution is emitted regardless of whether the plant is grid-connected. these datacenter plants don't run as clean or as efficient as proper power plants, but the primary acid rain contributor is no2. how much are we really talking about?
apparently you're very excited about his partisan victory. at some point we do need to actually think about how to effectively manage the country. there should be a back and forth about the appropriate degree of environmental regulation since it is a tradeoff between economic constraint and qualify of life.
I grew up in the 70s, and my father was a Nixon supporting environmental engineer. At the time the amount of nitrogen and sulfur being emitted into the air in the northeast was turning surface water into acid. a ph of 6 was getting quite common, 4 wasn't unusual, and if you were in a bad spot it was approaching 1. Not only would that water not support life, or be unsafe to drink, but it was actually unsafe to touch.
So if we were reasonable people we would look at the economic activity and the upside of burning these gasses, and add up the numbers and based on past experience make a very reasonable estimate of the impact, and make a decision.
but we fired all those people, and we're very much not interested in having this discussion. I fail to see how that's a win for anyone except the polluter.
What are you basing your they are not as clean assertion on? It's more likely that data center generation can be run continuously instead of turning on and off according to market prices. Can see the swing in amount of natural gas production during a day, https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot
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.
That's partly a result of having 50 states writing laws for themselves instead having all statues living under federal laws for everything. The line between what is acceptable to be regulated by federal laws and what is not is something I, not being a lawyer, have never studied. Power and water type utilities does feel like it might be something that could benefit from same rules/regulations every where, but basing regulations on feelings is probably not the best bit of logic
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
I'm trying to build a torment nexus and these negative ninnies complained that it used up all the electricity, so I made a machine that turns breathable air into toxic smoke to power the nexus and they don't like that ether!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
AI is making working from home much easier than ever before. You don't really need to live in a city to have a tech career now, and it will accelerate. We don't really need so many office workers going forward in cities. Almost anything they decide to do instead, will more productive in the economy than being a useless cubicle monkey thats no longer needed because AI can do it better.
Sure, they'll be unemployed until they chose to do something else that people will pay for. Like I was reading some guy is making downloads for Minecraft and making great living in it (science fiction a few decades ago). Worse case scenerio, move to the country side, and homestead. Thats how people survived wars and famines. Surely they can survive a tech transition.
> 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
> truly cannot comprehend the mindset
The mindset is "if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it"
That’s completely unfair. They would also rent the organs back to us on a subscription plan.
Do not forget loans with APR starting at 24%. Recourse of course. With the collateral taken back if payments fail.
I think you nailed the mindset with the "cartoon villain".
Less Snydley Whiplash and more the pig guy from captain planet though
Both of whom could happily sit together on a corporate board. It's just capitalism!
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.
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?
You're not thinking like a techbro. My startup shouldn't have to adhere to those regulations, but everyone else should. In fact, once my startup gets established we should make even more regulations
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.
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.
"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.
No, no, no you don't understand it's beyond the environment, it's not in an environment, it's been towed beyond the environment.
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 that is the original intent, why did that not get added into the law? Explicitly specififying that the exception only applies to emergency backup situations would have solved this, right?
My reasonable guess is that they did not want to make those case that need off-grid generation too hard to build. And never considered that anyone would build any actually significant amount of off-grid capacity. At certain threshold grid just makes economic sense. So rational actors would never do that.
Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
"Emergency" is a spectrum.
Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?
Clearly codifying intent in a string of bytes is hard, especially if an alternative makes a nice sound folding into a pocket.
Because congress passed the law in 1970 and did not expect we'd lose the ability to pass legislation that fixes minor problems with the original laws.
Since congress can't do that anymore, to maintain a functional civilization we have to turn minor loopholes in the original law into load-bearing aspects of an industrial society.
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.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to this President and his EPA that they are simply enforcing the laws as intended is foolish, irrational, and against all known evidence and their own words and policies and actions.
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.
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.
It does make some sense. There are some semi-reasonable scenarios where not that much power is needed and you use electricity.
Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
But it does have to do with whether it's interstate commerce!
You are being confused by the names. A general name doesn't mean it is a general law that applies to everyone.
Pretty insane, expect data center to be data center + coal power plant soon, why bother with generators or the pesky local grid.
Somebody mentioned that a solar panel field to power a data center requires a lot of impact assessment paper work and approvals.
Whereas natural gas generators do not.
Hence the runs on gas turbines, while solar panels are plentiful. ( Although I'd guess the consistency of power is a bigger issue. )
Running existing coal is now supposedly more expensive then putting in new wind or solar ... all else being equal.
That might be a reason, but probably more relevant is the fact that when you want solar to provide all power for a data center, you need a lot of buffering capacity (batteries). And then you also need a back up for when the sun doesn't shine... Which is probably a gas generator.
Easier to just install a gas generator then
AI training, not inference, seems like it would actually be a good application for a solar powered DC because you could just checkpoint and pause when it gets cloudy. It might end up worth it for the free electricity.
They should definitely use wind power, since you could use the fans to cool the computers at the same time!
I for one would love a nice HTTP status in the form of "due to the weather being nice and calm outside, AI services are down, go outside and enjoy the day"
Imposing rules like that is what we are supposed to use religion for.
> expect data center to be data center + coal power plant soon
Why do you think that’s likely?
Because coal is the cheapest source of electricity that isn't banned in the USA.
If coal doesn't pencil out economically for the grid it still likely won't pencil out economically for data centers even if you remove some of the compliance stuff.
Fair enough, I don't know if it matters short term for massive buildouts, but I'm sure whatever comes out of this is not a benefit for anyone except the owners.
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.
>There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA
And those people are the ones making these bifurcated rules undermining the EPA. The destruction is the purpose, it's not incidental
Correct. The people that don’t like the EPA appointed their friends who also don’t like the EPA to run the EPA.
This is the playbook generally - PE vulturism, but for government agencies. And to their credit it kinda works. Just… not for citizens of the country they have sworn to protect.
Currently in progress at GSA, OPM, CFPB (for a decade+), Interior, EPA, labor, education… Nevermind I should’ve started with an exclusion list instead.
> There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA.
Rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.
I don't think that's true. There's probably a valid critique that they're doing their job badly.
>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.
People looking down their nose and categorically denying that there is collateral damage when you wave the wand of legislation is a large part of how the current populist got elected.
> 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?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/climate/colorado-river-wa...
Did that happen?
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.
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.
> 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.
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!"
It’s literally the playbook from project 2025. FWIW it’s not the beginning, that has been a process at play since day 1 of the 2nd trump admin
Edit: actually since the 1st term as mentioned below
Right? This isnt the first chapter in a long story to come. This is the middle of the book where the villain has all but the final stone of the gauntlet but rather than put up a strong resistance we appear to have elected sycophants who are just watching and saying “dont let him get that stone”
Clarification: During his first term, Donald Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his role as state attorney general, Pruitt had sued the EPA multiple times to challenge federal environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_fi...
What a disgrace. Abysmal leadership in this country.
It's consistent leadership. Malevolent and stupid, but consistent.
Are you sure you're aiming your ire in the right direction in this case?
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?
The EPA is currently run by MAGA people.
Well the one thing I know about lawyers:
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.
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.
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?
FPP voting
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.
They got what they wanted by making half the country's idiots want it too
This seems pretty inline with our leadership tho. This country has always put profits above people.
Go research the green house gas emission projections for the end of Biden's term and the projections for Trump's administration.
Hand-waving dismissiveness doesn't serve when there were, in fact, significant (and yet not sufficient) efforts written into law.
We can have better things, but we as a people certainly need to do better. There are Mamdanis and there are Trumps. There's a difference.
Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Compression
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
Whataboutism works a lot better if you don't literally start sentences with "what about..."
Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.
Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas
Lead causes brain damage and memory impairment...
...and lead was standardized only because it was patentable. Otherwise ethanol was enough to achieve the same thing.
Brought you proudly by Thomas Midgley, Jr., who solved science problems by making bigger ones.
- https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/thomas-midgley-and-t...
- https://www.ehn.org/thomas-midgley-jr-lead-poisoning
They’ll be dead by the time it gets worse again
Just wait for the new generation of grifters to get their chance to be at the wheel. Current timid bullshit will be billed under nostalgia then.
Most of those octogenarians weren't responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you're 80 you came of age in the 60's, and you wouldn't have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s
No, lead poisoning makes you a brain damaged retard. They can probably hardly remember shit.
no, they don't
> This country has always put profits above people.
Please, the correct word is "value". Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.
The easiest way to radicalize workers is to simply tell them what profit is.
You are not radicalized enough.
EPA guidance source document https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2026-07/epa-issue...
This is so amateurish. This document misquotes its own authorities, with grade-school grammar mistakes:
> "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.
What about the substance?
I think it's very plausible and I don't disagree with you on that.
But: legal drafts failing at basic correctness issues, like quoting laws accurately, is an anti-signal.
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.
Are they clarifying? It reads to me like they are making up an exception for data centers out of thin air.
In what way do you think the guidance is in contradiction to the law?
The entire argument rests on a 36-year-old survey form: "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, transmission, distribution, or sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public.'"
So the leap is: an old survey form says "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public," therefore anything not grid-connected isn't a sale to the public.
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, or other statutory exemptions. And there are grid-connected plants serving a single customer so why the distinction?
Why the 1990 form? Congress froze it into the statute so a survey agency couldn't rewrite Clean Air Act coverage by editing a questionnaire. EPA is now exploiting that freeze by treating the form's obsolete boilerplate as substantive law; a taxonomy EIA itself abandoned, since modern EIA-860 covers essentially all generators above 1 MW, grid or not.
It's as if Congress defined citizenship by reference to a 1990 Census form, and the agency decided who's a citizen by parsing the instruction booklet.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference, this "interpretation" won't survive litigation, though the memo's "not final agency action" disclaimer means challengers may have to wait for an actual permitting decision to sue.
It’s an “or”. Generation, transmission, or sale. Not exclusively sale.
of electric energy to the public
its very much using the letter to violate the spirit - since the pollution is emitted regardless of whether the plant is grid-connected. these datacenter plants don't run as clean or as efficient as proper power plants, but the primary acid rain contributor is no2. how much are we really talking about?
> its very much using the letter
That’s how law works.
apparently you're very excited about his partisan victory. at some point we do need to actually think about how to effectively manage the country. there should be a back and forth about the appropriate degree of environmental regulation since it is a tradeoff between economic constraint and qualify of life.
I grew up in the 70s, and my father was a Nixon supporting environmental engineer. At the time the amount of nitrogen and sulfur being emitted into the air in the northeast was turning surface water into acid. a ph of 6 was getting quite common, 4 wasn't unusual, and if you were in a bad spot it was approaching 1. Not only would that water not support life, or be unsafe to drink, but it was actually unsafe to touch.
So if we were reasonable people we would look at the economic activity and the upside of burning these gasses, and add up the numbers and based on past experience make a very reasonable estimate of the impact, and make a decision.
but we fired all those people, and we're very much not interested in having this discussion. I fail to see how that's a win for anyone except the polluter.
What are you basing your they are not as clean assertion on? It's more likely that data center generation can be run continuously instead of turning on and off according to market prices. Can see the swing in amount of natural gas production during a day, https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot
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.
That's partly a result of having 50 states writing laws for themselves instead having all statues living under federal laws for everything. The line between what is acceptable to be regulated by federal laws and what is not is something I, not being a lawyer, have never studied. Power and water type utilities does feel like it might be something that could benefit from same rules/regulations every where, but basing regulations on feelings is probably not the best bit of logic
For the most part power grids are federally regulated. The exception is Texas because they are self-contained and don't cross state lines
States rights is not why there are issues with the power grid
> It is more cost efficient
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.
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....
Death by a thousand cuts.
It is in fact very nice to live in Europe and stagnate. Can recommend.
Title is taken from the reuters coverage[1], but I used the link to the original epa.gov press release.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/epa-says-power-data...
Surely this is going to cement the reputation of datacenters as a blight.
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.
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.
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.
About that P in your acronym...
> About that P in your acronym...
For the next couple of years (at least) it stands for "Pollution" or "Poisoning".
"Profit" or "Plunder" would seem to fit.
"privatization"
The EPA as overseen by Donald J. Thatcher.
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.
The US as currently composed is a climate supervillain, there's no other way to describe it.
We're in an existential crisis and instead of stepping up to a leadership role, they are actively sabotaging efforts to avert disaster.
Shameful.
I thought we were in a end of times global climate crisis? So confusing...
This is completely unforgivably wrong. Pollution is pollution regardless of the source. We need clean air and water to live.
right on cue for my meme of the three boxes this administration reaches into daily
fine then, make mar-a-lardo and the ballroom into datacentersNovember and the "AI" collapse cannot come soon enough
but if the Dems don't get the Senate nothing will change even in the slightest
How the fuck does anyone still support these world destroying assholes.
70 years of very successful propaganda techniques. Republicans are the GOATs of propaganda and manipulation of public opinion.
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.
$$$ Hangers on looking to scoop up some of the loose change overflowing the rich asshole's pockets
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.
The administration and Republicans get paid off, right wing billionaires produce propaganda news, voters consume said news.
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).
>The problem was never power or water
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.
I'm trying to build a torment nexus and these negative ninnies complained that it used up all the electricity, so I made a machine that turns breathable air into toxic smoke to power the nexus and they don't like that ether!
Aluminum smelters have run their own power generation for ages and don’t get to skip epa regulations.
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
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.
^ that's what you sound like.
I expect nothing and am still disappointed
then whats the fucking point of the EPA
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.
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.
I don't really care about 'future & children', but even I find this absurd.
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.
None of what you say is true to real life
AI is making working from home much easier than ever before. You don't really need to live in a city to have a tech career now, and it will accelerate. We don't really need so many office workers going forward in cities. Almost anything they decide to do instead, will more productive in the economy than being a useless cubicle monkey thats no longer needed because AI can do it better.
ok, but if AI is doing it better, then they won't be working remote, they'd be just unemployed.
Sure, they'll be unemployed until they chose to do something else that people will pay for. Like I was reading some guy is making downloads for Minecraft and making great living in it (science fiction a few decades ago). Worse case scenerio, move to the country side, and homestead. Thats how people survived wars and famines. Surely they can survive a tech transition.
How much money is your homestead making?