Despite Protests, Elon Musk Secures Air Permit for xAI
Local health The department of Memphis has granted Elon Musk’s XAI data center, an air permit to continue to exploit the gas turbines that feed the company’s grok chatbot. The permit comes in the midst of a generalized community opposition and an imminent trial alleging that society has violated the Clean Air Act.
On Wednesday, the Shelby County Health Department released its air license for the XAI project, after receiving hundreds of public comments. The news was reported for the first time by the Daily Memhian.
In June, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce announced that Xai had chosen a site in Memphis to build its new supercomputer. The company’s website boasts that it was able to build the supercomputer, Colossus, in just 122 days. This speed was due in part to mobile gas turbines that the company quickly started to settle on campus, the site of an old manufacturing plant.
Colossus allowed Xai to quickly catch up with its Rivals Openai, Google and Anthropic in the construction of peak artificial intelligence. It was built using 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPU, making it the largest supercomputer in the world.
The Xai Memphis campus is located in a black predominance community known as Boxtown which has been historically responsible for industrial projects which cause pollution. Gas turbines like those that XAI use in Memphis can be an important source of harmful emissions, such as nitrogen oxides, which create smog. Memphis already has some of the asthma levels of the highest children in Tennessee. Since Xai started managing its turbines, residents met several times and gathered against the project.
“I am horrified but not surprised,” says Keshaun Pearson, the head of the Memphis community against pollution. “The blatant violation of the Clean Air Act and the contempt for our human right to clean air, by the combustion of illegal methane turbines by XAI, were buffered as authorized by the health service of the county of Shelby. More than 1,000 people have submitted public comments requiring protection and adopted for an ambitious experience of a billionaire. ”
Under the Clean Air Act, “major” sources of emissions – such as a group of gas turbines – need a permit, known as the prevention of a significant deterioration permit (PSD). However, the heads of the health department of the county of Shelby told local journalists in August that this was not necessary for XAI, because its turbines were not designed to be permanent. In the midst of the local opposition, XAI finally asked for a permit with the health department of the county of Shelby in January, months after the start of turbines.
Last month, the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) announced that they intended to continue XAI for having raped the Clean Air Act.
“XAI’s decision to install and exploit dozens of polluting gas turbines without any license or public surveillance is a clear violation of the Clean Act,” said SELC’s main lawyer, Patrick Anderson, in a press release. “During the last year, these turbines have pumped the pollution that threatens the health of the families of Memphis. This opinion opens the way to a trial which can hold Xai responsible for its illegal refusal to obtain permits for its gas turbines. ”
