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Discussion (198 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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.
The mindset is "if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it"
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.
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.
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.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
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?
Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
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.
Easier to just install a gas generator then
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"
Why do you think that’s likely?
They're coupling them with dedicated natural gas power plants. Meta finally stopped the green charade and simply dropped out of RE100, as they're all just going full speed ahead on destroying the planet.
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.
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.
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...
And those people are the ones making these bifurcated rules undermining the EPA. The destruction is the purpose, it's not incidental
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.
Edit: actually since the 1st term as mentioned below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_fi...
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
Please, the correct word is "value". Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.
That’s how law works.
> "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.
But: legal drafts failing at basic correctness issues, like quoting laws accurately, is an anti-signal.
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.
States rights is not why there are issues with the power grid
EDIT: I should add, states DO also regulate electric utilities but generally that is around local issues like charging rates to customers. the bulk electric system (transmission and generation) is largely the domain of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
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.
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.
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.
[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.
For the next couple of years (at least) it stands for "Pollution" or "Poisoning".
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?
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.
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.
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.
We're in an existential crisis and instead of stepping up to a leadership role, they are actively sabotaging efforts to avert disaster.
Shameful.
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 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.