Elon Musk xAI permit for Mississippi plant despite pollution concerns

Elon Musk’s xAI scored a victory Tuesday in Mississippi, where regulators authorized the artificial intelligence company to build a power plant in the town of Southaven that includes 41 natural gas-burning turbines to power nearby data centers.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) held a board meeting earlier in the day to vote on whether to issue the permit. The NAACP and other civil rights and environmental advocates tried to postpone the meeting, arguing that it would conflict with efforts by some residents to vote in the state’s primary elections the same day.

“We are outraged that despite the community’s clear demand that the Election Day hearing be postponed, MDEQ has chosen to bulldoze a decision that silences the residents most harmed,” Abre’ Conner, the NAACP’s director of environmental and climate justice, said in a statement from his organization and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

MDEQ did not immediately respond to a request for information about the hearing.

xAI, now owned by SpaceX after the merger announcement in February, has been using more than a dozen temporary turbines at the facility in Southaven for months, claiming no federal permits are needed. The company has two data centers, Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, in Memphis, Tennessee, just across the Mississippi state line.

As Musk pursues a massive IPO for SpaceX that would be valued at $1.25 trillion after the merger, he is counting on Memphis and the surrounding area to provide the power and resources needed to build the combined company’s AI infrastructure.

In addition to efforts to build a power plant in Southaven, xAI also plans to build another large data center there, It was named Macrohardrr in a warehouse that was previously a GXO Logistics facility. Southaven and Memphis residents have been protesting xAI’s plans and operations for months over air and noise pollution issues.

“The permit issued by MDEQ has a number of serious flaws that violate federal law, run contrary to the agency’s own policies, and put families in North Mississippi and Memphis at risk,” the NAACP and SELC said in a joint statement Tuesday. he said.

The NAACP, represented by SELC, plans to sue xAI over the company’s previous and ongoing use of natural gas-fired turbines without federal permits.

Opponents claim that xAI understated the amount of pollution that would be emitted from its turbines in its permit application, citing concerns about smog-forming nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants that could be harmful to human health, including formaldehyde and airborne particulate matter.

They also say xAI failed to attend community meetings or conduct proper environmental reviews while evading its responsibility to comply with federal air quality regulations.

Southhaven resident Jason Haley, who observed Tuesday’s vote, told CNBC that although the result was expected, he was disappointed. Haley said xAI is struggling with noise from its turbines and is part of a local coalition. Safe and Sound This is prompting local politicians to demand that xAI control noise levels.

Training and running AI models like Grok, developed by xAI, requires large amounts of computing and power, and rising electricity bills are partly due to the large electricity consumption of new data centers. At a meeting with the White House last week, executives from technology companies including xAI signed non-binding commitments to provide their own energy for their facilities.

Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at SELC, said Tuesday that regulators sided with Musk’s business goals over local residents’ concerns.

“Mississippi state regulators appear to be more interested in fast-tracking xAI’s personal power plant than conducting a comprehensive review of its impacts and engaging meaningfully with the families in their communities who will have to live with this dirty facility and its pollution,” Anderson said.

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