Environmental justice groups are appealing the decision by Memphis-area regulators to issue a Clean Air Act permit to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
The Shelby County, Tennessee, Health Department issued a permit to xAI for 15 methane gas turbines earlier this month. The permit came after months of the company operating as many as 35 of the machines at its South Memphis facility without a permit or any pollution controls on the turbines.
Environmental and community groups had argued that the Health Department should have shut down xAI rather than issue a permit. In officially appealing the permit, the groups now say that the Health Department’s decision failed to address the unpermitted turbines at the facility and ignored public comments raising concerns about the generators.
“The health department failed to hold xAI accountable for unlawfully installing 35 polluting methane gas turbines at the site before getting a permit, setting a dangerous precedent that opens the door for xAI or other companies to run any number of new polluting turbines at any time without any public oversight or approval,” said Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Amanda Garcia.
The xAI permitting decision came just a couple of weeks before the Department of Defense announced a new $200 million contract with the company behind Musk’s chatbot, Grok.
The company has already started work to bring its supercomputer to a second site in South Memphis. Documents have shown that xAI is considering using 40 to 90 gas turbines to power the second site, and on Tuesday, xAI Senior Manager for Infrastructure Brent Mayo told the Rotary Club of Memphis that when it comes to powering its second facility, ”we are copying and pasting what we did” at the first location.
When xAI first came to Memphis in June 2024, it initially argued that it did not require any permits for the methane gas turbines that would power its supercomputer. The company said the gas-burning turbines were only temporary and too small to require Clean Air Act permits, even as the SELC calculated that the turbines had cumulatively become the largest emitter of smog-forming pollution in the county. The Health Department, in its response to comments on the permit application, agreed.
Now, the SELC’s appeal says the fact that xAI ultimately applied for Clean Air Act permits for the same machines shows that they required permits from the beginning.
What’s more, they say that because the turbines had already been running for months before a permit was issued, the Health Department should have considered the data center’s application as a major modification, not as a new minor source of pollution.
The SELC filed its appeal on behalf of community groups and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which had previously told xAI it intended to sue the company over its operation of the turbines without a permit just a few miles from majority-Black neighborhoods.
The appeal itself discusses the impact that xAI’s turbines have had on people living near the facility in an area that EPA had already designated as having unhealthy air due to smog-forming emissions before the company’s arrival.
“Appellants members and supporters have taken steps to reduce their exposure to air pollution, including avoiding spending as much time outdoors as they would ordinarily, wearing masks when outside, and closing windows when home,” the appeal says, adding that people’s “quality of life is negatively affected by the precautions they feel compelled to take to reduce their exposure to air pollution.”
