Surprise! xAI is Running a Bunch of Unpermitted Turbines in North Mississippi

Tim De Chant, TechCrunch: Elon Musk’s xAI is running nearly 50 natural gas turbines at its Mississippi data center, power plants that the state is currently not regulating thanks to a loophole. The power plants are considered “mobile” by the state of Mississippi because they are sitting on flatbed trailers, thus allowing them to dodge to air pollution regulations for one year. The NAACP, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents in the area, says the unchecked emissions from the turbines is worsening air quality in an already polluted region. This week, it asked the court for an injunction against xAI. These turbines power xAI’s second data center in the Memphis area. The first was recently leased to Anthropic. Currently, xAI has a permit for 15 turbines at the site, but as Alex Rozier writes, the company is running a lot more than that: XAI now has 46 “temporary-mobile” turbines at its Mississippi facility, according to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, up…