Updated Oct 29

Power Behind the Meter

The wait for a gas turbine now runs to 2032. GE Vernova, the largest maker, reported on October 28 that it sold delivery slots for that year this quarter. Its gas capacity under contract reached 122 gigawatts. Orders signed in 2026 cost about 50 per cent more per kilowatt than 2025’s. Data centres are about a fifth of its customers.

Texas’s pause shut one door and left another open. After advocates showed approvals kept flowing, the state regulator took its online system offline on October 21. It suspended 17 data-centre construction and wastewater authorisations. As of October 23, the air permits for the gas plants were untouched. Seven emission certifications still read issued, and Nexus’s self-powered Hubbard plant awaits its permit, with a hearing requested.

The challenges keep moving. New Mexico’s hearing officer refused to dismiss Project Jupiter’s revised permit, which caps the fuel-cell plant at 1,600 of its 2,400 megawatts. The hearing opens December 7. In New Jersey, neighbours served notice of a Clean Air Act suit over the 62 unpermitted generators at Vineland. In Mississippi, SpaceXAI’s subsidiary has bought five homes near its Southaven turbines under offers that require sellers to drop their noise claims.

New Oct 29

The whole story4 chapters

The state of it — as of October 29, 2026

Paused

Texas permits for data-centre projects, until a grid audit ends

2 of 90 GW

announced on-site generation actually operating, by Cleanview’s count

36%

of new data-centre capacity through 2030 forecast to run on on-site power

Today

NewOct 28, 2026

Turbine Slots Are Now Selling for 2032, at Half Again Last Year’s Price

GE Vernova, the largest gas-turbine maker, reported on October 28 that its third-quarter orders and slot reservations reached 11 gigawatts. That took gas capacity under contract from 116 to 122 gigawatts, against 5 gigawatts shipped. It expects at least 130 by year-end. It sold delivery slots for 2032 this quarter. Gas orders signed in 2026 are priced about 50 per cent higher per kilowatt than 2025’s. Data centres are about a fifth of its roughly 100 gas customers. These are the company’s own figures, with no split for behind-the-meter buyers.

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GE Vernova

Earlier this month

NewOct 23, 2026

Neighbours Move to Sue Over the Vineland Data Centre’s Unpermitted Generators

Sustain SJ, through Earthjustice, served a Clean Air Act notice of intent to sue over the 62 gas generators powering the Vineland, New Jersey data centre without federal permits. The notice names DataOne, the campus operator Nebius and Northeast Precast. It also alleges missing minor-source permits for other units. New Jersey fined DataOne $1.07 million in September. According to Floodlight, DataOne withdrew an air-permit application for gas engines in May and plans to switch to 300 megawatts of fuel cells. The claims are allegations, not findings. The state’s 45-day deadline to permit or stop the generators falls in early November.

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Community News (New Jersey)

Oct 21, 2026

“Grid power has always been our preferred long-term solution, and we appreciate Supervisor Saines' leadership in bringing stakeholders and Dominion Energy together toward continued partnership in developing a solution to bridge utility power to the campus by the end of 2028, more than a decade earlier than previously projected, while maintaining system reliability.”

— Vantage Data Centers

Misty Allen, Vantage Data Centers’ vice-president of public policy for North America, on the plan to take its Sterling campus off on-site gas turbines.

Not yet checked

Unverified: a commitment due by the end of 2028, conditional on Dominion’s Golden substation, which Loudoun supervisors vote on November 5 (Loudoun Now).

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Loudoun Now

Oct 20, 2026

Virginia’s Only Turbine-Powered Data Centre Could Move to the Grid by 2028

Vantage’s VA2 campus in Sterling, the only data centre in Virginia running on its own gas turbines rather than the grid, could switch them off by the end of 2028 under an understanding with Dominion Energy. Dominion would supply part of the campus’s power through a temporary arrangement, tied to a new substation. On October 20 Loudoun supervisors voted 8–0 to bring the substation vote forward to November 5. Dominion says the campus does not jump the queue for large customers, and that its full load still waits in it. Residents have complained of round-the-clock turbine noise. The removal is planned, not done, and depends on the substation.

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Loudoun NowLoudoun Times-Mirror

Oct 20, 2026

Advocates Count 177 Gigawatts of Gas Planned for Data Centres That Bring Their Own Power

A report from Earthjustice and the Better Data Center Project, first covered on October 20, counts 177 gigawatts of gas generation proposed under contract to specific data centres, about 70 per cent of it including some behind-the-meter plant. It estimates gas would supply about 80 per cent of such power coming online in the next five years. Of the disclosed capacity, 27 per cent is reciprocating engines and 25 per cent simple-cycle turbines — the less efficient kinds — and 6 per cent fuel cells. More than ten states have passed laws on the arrangement. These are advocates’ compilations of other trackers’ proposals, not plants built.

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EarthjusticeThe Texas Tribune

NewOct 19, 2026

Texas Paused Data-Centre Permits; Three On-Site Gas Plants’ Air Permits Moved the Next Day

On September 22, the day after the governor’s pause, Texas’s environmental regulator issued preliminary decisions to grant major-source air permits for three gas plants built to power data centres: VoltaGrid’s plant for Vantage near Abilene, Nexus’s self-powered Hubbard campus and NRG’s Prairie plant. None is final. Records published October 19 by FracTracker and Public Citizen show at least 14 generation applications kept moving. On October 21–22 the regulator suspended data-centre stormwater approvals. The air side was untouched: as of October 23, seven emission certifications still read issued. Nexus Hubbard’s permit remains pending, with a hearing requested October 13.

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FracTracker AlliancePublic CitizenInside Climate NewsThe Texas TribuneTexas Commission on Environmental QualityTexas Commission on Environmental QualityKTTZ (Texas Tech Public Media)Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

Oct 19, 2026

“No permits have been approved. In line with the Governor's directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits.”

— Office of the Texas Governor Mixed

Governor Greg Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, responding to reports that Texas’s environmental regulator kept processing data-centre permits after the September 21 pause.

Checked: mixed

Mixed. No final air permit for a data-centre plant has been reported. But the regulator issued preliminary decisions on three major-source plant permits on September 22, and its own records logged stormwater coverage and emission certifications as issued after the pause (FracTracker; Public Citizen). It says the stormwater permits were suspended on October 20 (Texas Tribune).

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The Texas TribuneInside Climate NewsFracTracker AlliancePublic CitizenHouston Public Media

Oct 19, 2026

The Justice Department Cannot End the NAACP’s Suit Over the Southaven Turbines, a Judge Rules

A federal judge in northern Mississippi, Debra Brown, refused on October 19 the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the NAACP’s Clean Air Act suit over the gas turbines SpaceXAI ran at Southaven to power Colossus 2. She ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency’s role as the act’s main enforcer does not give the federal government control of every suit brought under it. The government stays in the case as an intervenor. The ruling decides nothing about whether the company broke the law, and no hearing date has been set. The plaintiffs’ lawyers say an appeals court had already refused to pause the case.

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DeSoto County NewsMississippi Today

NewOct 15, 2026

Venture Global Lines Up 16 Gas Power Islands for Data Centres — With No Order or Site Yet

Venture Global, the LNG exporter, signed frame agreements on October 15 with GE Vernova and Baker Hughes for up to 16 combined-cycle gas “power islands” of 720 megawatts each — about 11.5 gigawatts — to run off-grid data centres; local press reports the deal at $17.2 billion. The agreements reserve manufacturing slots on agreed terms; no unit is ordered, a first purchase order is expected by the end of 2026, and deliveries run to 2034. The plants would sit on its land beside its Plaquemines and Cameron parish terminals; because they stay off the public grid they need no state utility-commission approval, though they need environmental permits. No customer is named.

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Venture GlobalBIC MagazineNatural Gas IntelligenceThe Center SquareAmerican Press (Lake Charles)The Times-Picayune | The Advocate (NOLA.com)

NewOct 15, 2026

Project Jupiter’s Power Plant Slips to a December Hearing, and Oracle Asks the Utility for Backup

New Mexico’s hearing on the air permit for Project Jupiter’s 2.4-gigawatt fuel-cell plant opens December 7, under an October 16 scheduling order; a decision had been due by November 23. On October 2 an environment-department lawyer wrote that modelling the exact design raised emissions about 2 per cent but doubled modelled pollutant concentrations. A hearing officer refused opponents’ motion to dismiss the revised application, reported October 28. That revision caps output at 1,600 megawatts, about 65 per cent, and raises the stacks; the Albuquerque Journal reports no engineering change to cut emissions. Oracle has asked El Paso Electric for emergency backup power.

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Searchlight New MexicoOrgan Mountain NewsNew Mexico Environment DepartmentSearchlight New MexicoSource NMLas Cruces Sun-NewsAlbuquerque Journal

Oct 15, 2026

Oracle and its microgrid developer, Yucca Growth Infrastructure, said design changes cut the Project Jupiter fuel-cell plant’s emissions by about 35 per cent. “We’re proud of the low-emissions solution that Bloom Energy fuel cells bring to Project Jupiter and are excited we were able to commit to even lower emissions than we originally expected.”

— Oracle

Not yet checked

Unverified. The revised design had not been filed or seen by New Mexico’s environment department when it was announced; the department’s own modelling had found concentrations double the developers’ earlier figures (Searchlight New Mexico).

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Searchlight New MexicoOrgan Mountain NewsLas Cruces Sun-News

Oct 14, 2026

Two Border Campuses' Own Power Could Out-Emit Their Counties

ProPublica and El Paso Matters set the permits beside each other. Oracle's Project Jupiter in New Mexico plans on-site fuel cells of up to 2.45 gigawatts, and its pending air permit would allow up to 8.8 million tons of greenhouse gases a year; Oracle says actual emissions will be lower. El Paso Electric's gas plant for Meta's El Paso campus — a utility plant, approved by Texas regulators under a standard permit 20 days after filing — could add up to 1.3 million tons, by the reporters' own estimate. Together that is up to about 10 million tons, against 8.4 million for El Paso and Hudspeth counties combined in 2019.

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ProPublica

Oct 14, 2026

A 702-Megawatt Fuel-Cell Plant Is Planned for Google in Wyoming

American Electric Power plans to spend about $4 billion on a 702 MW Bloom Energy fuel-cell plant near Cheyenne, selling all of its output to Google for 20 years. Construction is to start in 2026 and finish by the end of 2028, when the fuel cells must be installed to earn an investment tax credit; nothing is built. The offtake is still conditional, with a December 2026 milestone, and AEP says Google may move the fuel cells elsewhere if the site does not advance. Black Hills, the local utility, will serve the campus partly through about 2.1 GW of third-party resources on a private microgrid; whether this plant is among them is unconfirmed.

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American Electric PowerPOWER MagazineUtility Dive

Oct 14, 2026

The technology generates electricity without combustion of natural gas, and the project includes plans to integrate carbon capture technology to deliver reliable, near-zero-emissions power.

— American Electric Power

Not yet checked

Unverified. The plant is not built, and the announcement gives no capture rate, start date or storage site for the carbon capture it says is planned.

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American Electric Power

NewOct 14, 2026

Switch Names Itself as Owner of a 510-Megawatt Gas Plant Proposed for Its Nevada Campus

Switch has told Nevada’s utility regulator it will own a proposed 510-megawatt, nine-turbine gas plant on a former refinery site inside the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, where its data centres sit. Nexus Fulcrum filed it in June for an unnamed “single off-taker”. Construction would run from 2027 to 2029. The application puts emissions at up to 2 million tonnes of CO2 and water at 145 acre-feet a year. Gas would come from a proposed pipeline expansion due in 2028, pending FERC. As a private plant it falls outside Nevada’s renewable standard. Utility approval and an air permit are still needed. In September the regulator approved two temporary gas plants of 362 megawatts for Fleet Data Centers.

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Las Vegas Review-JournalNevada Current

Oct 13, 2026

A Texas County Asks for a Hearing a Gas Plant's Permit Does Not Require

Bastrop County commissioners voted unanimously on October 13 to ask Texas's environmental regulator to hold a public meeting on the air permit for Pacifico Energy's proposed 48-turbine gas plant at Cedar Creek, which would power a data-centre campus whose primary tenant is reported to be Anthropic. The plant was filed under a standard permit, which needs no public notice or comment; the vote does not oblige the regulator to act. Its size is reported two ways — about 1,300 MW per state filings cited by CBS Austin, 710 MW per the Austin American-Statesman. The application sits under Texas's pause on data-centre permits. Neither developer nor tenant commented.

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CBS AustinAustin American-Statesman

Oct 5, 2026

A Third of New Data-Centre Load Is Forecast to Arrive Without the Grid

Enverus, an energy-data firm, forecasts that on-site generation will serve 22.5 gigawatts of new US data-centre load through 2030, about 36 per cent of the capacity it expects to be added. It rates about 60 per cent of that as tied to high-confidence projects. Serving it and other industrial sites would take 29.6 gigawatts of new gas plant. Sixty-one per cent of that is engines, smaller turbines and fuel cells, which can run in 18 to 24 months against up to 80 for a large combined-cycle unit. It is a forecast, and far below the roughly 90 gigawatts developers have announced.

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Power Engineering

Oct 1, 2026

Seven Senators Ask the Operators to Keep the Comment Period Themselves

Seven US senators, among them Mark Kelly and Sheldon Whitehouse, wrote to data-centre operators asking each to say by 23 October whether it lobbied the EPA or the White House on the proposal to end mandatory public notice for minor air permits. They also ask whether each will keep offering permit information and 30 days of comment even where a state stops requiring it. The letter says the permit class covers “almost all of the proposed fossil fuel-fired power plants and generators that would power data centers”. The published copy is a template, so the recipients are not known.

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United States Senate

Oct 1, 2026

New Jersey’s Unpermitted Generators Put Out About 140 Tons of Smog Gases, an Estimate Finds

A Rutgers environmental scientist, working from generator records Floodlight obtained, estimated that DataOne’s 62 unpermitted gas generators at Vineland emitted about 140 tons of nitrogen oxides while they ran — enough to rank among New Jersey’s five largest emitters of 2025. She and a former EPA air-enforcement chief put the fleet’s potential at full use above 1,500 tons a year, against the 25 tons that makes a facility a major source. DataOne’s own letter to the state says 16 ran from October 2025 and all 62 by June, more than 46,000 hours before inspectors found them on July 29. It is an estimate, not a measurement.

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FloodlightKVIA (ABC-7 El Paso)

NewSep 29, 2026

The Turbines’ Neighbours Are Offered a Buyout, if They Drop Their Claims

A SpaceXAI subsidiary, MZX Tech, has offered to buy homes around the Southaven turbine plant “in exchange for, among other things, a release of all claims” in a nuisance suit three residents filed earlier in 2026. The letter names no price, and signers recover nothing from the suit. County records show MZX had bought five Colonial Hills homes since October 9, the Guardian reported on October 28. A realtor’s claimed target of 418 homes is unconfirmed. A separate proposed class action over noise was filed in Memphis in September. Both suits are allegations, not findings.

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FOX13 Memphis (WHBQ)WMC Action News 5News From The StatesThe GuardianThe Verge

This quarter

Sep 27, 2026

One Site, Several Small Permits

Lawyers for permit opponents and former EPA air officials say data-centre developers are splitting one site’s generators across several “minor source” permits, each under the threshold that triggers a full federal review. In North Carolina, Amazon and Duke Energy hold separate permits for 649 diesel generators at one campus; Amazon says that “reflects the actual ownership and operational structure”, and state regulators accepted it. In New Mexico, Project Jupiter’s developer applied for two gas microgrids, each proposing 20.2 to 24.2 tons a year of hazardous pollutants against a 25-ton line. It withdrew the application in April, according to the opponents’ attorney.

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The Guardian

Sep 25, 2026

A Permit’s Major-or-Minor Label Becomes Harder to Reopen

The EPA finalised a rule, effective 26 October, under which the terms of a pre-construction air permit cannot be revisited when the plant’s operating permit is later reviewed. That includes whether the plant was treated as a major or a minor source. The bar applies where the first permit went through public notice, comment and the chance of a court challenge. A separate proposal from May, still pending, would let developers lay foundations and put up building shells before any air permit is issued. The summary is Beveridge & Diamond’s, a law firm that advises developers.

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Beveridge & Diamond

Sep 22, 2026

New Jersey Fines a Data Centre for 62 Generators It Never Permitted

New Jersey's environmental regulator fined DataOne $1.07 million on September 22 for 62 gas generators of about 2 megawatts each at its Vineland data centre — roughly 120 MW in all — that inspectors found on July 29 without the air permits required for any generator over 37 kilowatts. The company has 45 days to obtain permits or stop running them; until then they may keep operating. Floodlight's thermal-drone survey in August had found 45 of the 62 running. DataOne disputes that they are permanent equipment and says it will apply for the permits. Nebius operates the campus, up to 350 MW, under a contract with Microsoft.

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New Jersey MonitorFloodlight

Sep 22, 2026

As announced in the Spring, we are transitioning to low-emission, quiet fuel cells as part of the site's permanent power solution and have the necessary approvals in place for this solution.

— DataOne

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New Jersey Monitor

Sep 21, 2026

Texas Stops Issuing the Permits an Off-Grid Plant Cannot Be Built Without

Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to “pause the issuance of all permits related to data center projects until ERCOT completes its review”. The agency says that covers all air and water permits for infrastructure directly supporting data centres. The August freeze on grid connections left one route open: build a private plant and never join the queue. An on-site gas plant still needs a state air permit, so that route is now shut as well. That is the reading of two law firms and two newsrooms; the letter itself never mentions on-site power. Plants already permitted appear untouched, and it is unclear whether pending applications are still being processed. The commission owes the governor a compliance report by 19 October. ERCOT expects to finish in December.

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Office of the Texas GovernorOffice of the Texas GovernorHouston Public MediaThe Texas TribuneBracewell LLPFoley & Lardner LLP

Sep 18, 2026

Georgia Settles Its First Off-Grid Plant Case for $42,500

Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division closed its case over the Newton County plant it stopped in July with two consent orders totalling $42,500, both for “installing engines prior to receiving a construction permit”. VoltaGrid, which is building the gas plant, pays $11,500 and must keep construction stopped until it holds a permit. The larger penalty, $31,000, went to the data-centre developer next door, identified in local reporting as Serverfarm, over 37 diesel backup generators; its permit was issued the day inspectors arrived. Neither company admitted liability. Inspectors counted eight gas engines on the site in June and eleven in July.

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Georgia Environmental Protection DivisionGeorgia Environmental Protection DivisionWRDW / Atlanta News First (Gray Media)The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sep 15, 2026

Going Off-Grid Is the Smaller Number, by a Factor of Five

BloombergNEF projects US data centres burning about 18 billion cubic feet of gas a day by 2035, second only to LNG exports as a driver of American demand growth, and nearly double what the firm forecast nine months earlier — already discounted for announced projects that will never be built. The split inside that total is this page’s subject. On-site plants that bypass the grid entirely, including those announced by Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, account for 2.9 to 3.4 billion cubic feet a day — roughly what every data centre in the country burns today. Grid-connected demand accounts for a further 15 billion, five times the growth from all other grid-connected sectors combined. Leaving the grid is the visible minority of the story.

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TechCrunch

Sep 15, 2026

A Million Tonnes a Day, Two Derivations Deep

Applying the IEA’s figure of roughly 60 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per cubic foot burned — counting extraction, processing and distribution — TechCrunch puts the extra data-centre gas demand at about 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gas a day, some 12 per cent of present US emissions. The emissions factor is the IEA’s and the arithmetic is the outlet’s, applied to a forecast rather than to a measurement. It is a useful order of magnitude and it is not a measured figure.

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TechCrunch

Sep 2, 2026

The company that runs Grok wants to cast its own turbine blades

SpaceX confirmed it is building a foundry in Bastrop, Texas to cast the single-crystal nickel-superalloy blades and vanes at the heart of an industrial gas turbine, with the output kept in-house for Raptor rocket turbopumps and for the turbines powering xAI’s data centers. Elon Musk called it a game-changer that could bring turbines online 18 months sooner; analysts say a new casting plant takes four years to reach production, its vacuum furnaces two years to procure, and can scrap more than half its castings for years. Howmet Aerospace, which makes roughly half the world’s turbine components, fell 7 percent.

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QuartzManufacturing Today

Sep 1, 2026

A turbine maker returns to America after 30 years, and the majors are sold out to 2030

The gas-turbine crunch pulled a new supplier into the US market: Italy's Ansaldo Energia, absent more than three decades, will sell eight mid-sized AE64.3A machines — about 624 megawatts — to Pacifico Energy for a Texas data-center project, first deliveries in 2027. It enters a market the incumbents cannot keep up with: GE Vernova reports 116 gigawatts under contract and is mostly sold out through 2030, Siemens Energy holds 95, and across the four largest makers firm orders top 157 gigawatts, near 247 including reserved slots. That scarcity is the whole reason behind-the-meter developers buy whatever generates power.

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POWER MagazineGE VernovaSiemens Energy

Aug 31, 2026

The first eleven turbines go quiet at Southaven

SpaceXAI shut down 11 of the 69 temporary, mobile gas turbines running its Colossus 2 data center at Southaven, Mississippi — the first to go dark under the 30 July agreed order with state regulators, which gives every turbine its own retirement date, bars any new one after 15 July, and requires shutdowns to be reported to the department every two weeks. Physical removal begins as early as September and must finish by July 2027. What replaces them is not a grid connection but a permitted 1.2-gigawatt plant of 41 permanent turbines on the same site.

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WMC Action News 5WMC Action News 5xAI

Aug 26, 2026

The EPA Proposes to Stop Making States Publish the Permit Applications

The EPA has proposed removing the federal requirement that states publicise applications for "minor source" air permits and run a 30-day comment period — the category that covers landfills, laundromats, steel mills and data centres. Attorneys general from 14 states and three cities have written opposing it: "despite the name, even 'minor' sources can pose significant health and environmental impacts", and removing publication and comment "sidelines these fundamental transparency and democratic safeguards… particularly for accelerating the buildout of data centers and other artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure". States could still set stricter standards; they could also drop the comment period, because nothing federal would require it. It is a proposal — comment is still required today, and the change would take effect within a year.

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Tom's Hardware

Aug 25, 2026

The twelve biggest gas projects planned in Texas are all built to run data centers

Global Energy Monitor's late-August tracker update found the twelve largest gas power projects planned in Texas are all dedicated to powering data centers behind the meter, and the permit filings put their emissions ceilings in the millions of tons a year. Fermi America's Project Matador plans 90 combined-cycle turbines authorized for 24 million tons of CO2; the 6-gigawatt Nexus Hubbard, 22 million; engine farms of 240 and 640 units, 10 and 8 million. Nationwide, GEM finds engines and simple-cycle turbines — the quick, cheap, dirty kind — make up nearly half the technology. These are permit ceilings, not measured output, and announced, not built. Nationally GEM counts 189 gigawatts of gas plant in development to power data centres directly, nearly double six months earlier and 16.9 of it under construction, without separating on-site plants from dedicated grid-connected ones.

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San Antonio CurrentGlobal Energy MonitorAmerican Public Power Association

Aug 25, 2026

The NAACP Sues xAI Over the 27 Turbines Running Colossus 2

The NAACP and its Mississippi state conference, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, sued xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech under the Clean Air Act for running 27 gas turbines at Southaven, Mississippi without an air permit to power the Colossus 2 data centre. The suit follows a 60-day notice of intent sent in February, after which the turbines kept running. Counsel puts the plant’s potential to emit at more than 1,700 tons of nitrogen oxides a year — which would make it the largest industrial NOx source in a greater Memphis area already failing national smog standards — plus up to 180 tons of fine particulates and 19 of formaldehyde. Those are potential-to-emit figures asserted by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, not measurements. A separate 41-turbine plant is being permitted at the same site.

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Southern Environmental Law Center

Aug 19, 2026

The court that was going to decide whether the turbines running Grok can keep burning has put it off

A federal preliminary-injunction hearing set for 24 August in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi could force SpaceXAI — the company xAI became after merging into Elon Musk's rocket firm — to switch off the gas plant powering its Colossus 2 data center in Southaven, near Memphis. The NAACP and its Mississippi State Conference, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, are suing under the Clean Air Act over turbines the company runs without air permits; discovery revealed roughly 30 more than first alleged, putting about 57 to 60 in operation and 69 on site, only 14 fitted with the pollution controls a permit would require. SpaceXAI told the court that losing the power would make Grok "largely cease to function"; the Department of Justice moved to intervene on 15 June, calling Grok vital to national security. The hearing would have overtaken a 30 July agreed order binding the company to rebuild the plant as a permitted 1.2-gigawatt facility by July 2027. It did not happen: a notice filed on 21 August postponed it, with no new date given. The turbines keep running in the meantime — 57 active of 69 on site as of July — and the plant is expected to power two further SpaceXAI data centres now under construction, Macrohardrr in Southaven and "minihard" in Memphis.

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The Commercial AppealAOL

Aug 14, 2026

The power plants being built for AI are almost all the least efficient kind of gas plant there is

A survey of air-permit applications across five of the largest data-center power projects in the country found that every one of them relies on simple-cycle gas turbines — the least efficient way to burn gas for electricity. A simple-cycle turbine mixes fuel and air in a combustion chamber and vents the waste heat. The combined-cycle units generally used at power plants that serve the grid add a steam turbine to capture that heat and turn it into more electricity, and so release fewer emissions for the same amount of energy. Reporting by WIRED found the pattern across Amazon's Pecos County plant, which "will rely solely on simple cycle turbines"; at least three Ohio plants being developed by the oil and gas company Williams for Meta; a plant Crusoe is building on its Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, to power a Microsoft data center, with 39 simple-cycle turbines; Google's Goodnight data center in Texas, whose permit application describes 20 more; and xAI's two Colossus data centers in Memphis, run by dozens of them. All are permitted to release millions of tons of greenhouse gases. The reason is not a regulatory loophole — no exemption is at work, and both Williams and Crusoe say their plants comply with local and national rules and carry emissions-control equipment. It is speed. Installing a handful of simple-cycle turbines is quicker and cheaper than waiting for the extra equipment a combined-cycle plant needs, against a yearslong backlog for turbine orders and parts. "Right now, because of the way the supply chain is for turbines, they're having to go with what they can get their hands on," said Britt Burt of the energy market intelligence firm Industrial Info Resources, who had not expected developers to lean on simple-cycle units this heavily. The load shape helps too: AI training draws enormous spikes on demand, and simple-cycle machines start and stop faster. "If you have a highly fluctuating load, it's better to have 30 things that can individually turn on and off than to have one giant thing that doesn't like to be turned on and off," said Stephen Lynch, who directs Penn State's Center for Gas Turbine Research. The spikes are severe enough that operators have reported turbines breaking under the stress of repeated starts. One trade-off runs the other way: simple-cycle turbines generally need no water, where Burt estimates a 250-megawatt combined-cycle plant could draw about 75,000 gallons an hour — and Amazon's permit application lists that absence of water use as an "environmental benefit." These machines are being built to last decades.

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WIRED

Aug 8, 2026

A campus designed to take no grid electricity at all, with an air permit where an interconnection agreement would be

Amazon confirmed it is behind GW Ranch, an AI data-center campus in Pecos County, Texas built to run entirely off the electricity grid on a dedicated on-site gas plant — its first major off-grid data center, and among the largest natural-gas power projects ever proposed in the United States. The significance is architectural: on a campus that draws nothing from the grid, the document that sets the ceiling on how much computing can be built is not an interconnection agreement but an air permit. Texas issued that permit — PSDTX1672, to the developer Pacifico GW — in January 2026. It authorizes 35 turbines for up to 7.65 gigawatts of nameplate capacity, about 5 gigawatts of nominal delivered output, and up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, more than any existing US power plant emits; at that ceiling it would be the single largest source of greenhouse-gas pollution in the country. Operators rarely emit as much as their permits allow, but a fraction of that ceiling is still very large. On stage, the project is permitted and under construction, not energized: Amazon confirmed ownership after filing three building permits with the state in early August, and satellite imagery showed land clearing had begun by 24 July. The company framed the off-grid design as protective of other electricity customers, saying the campus is "powered by new on-site generation that won't raise electricity costs for Texas families," that Amazon "believes in paying the full costs of powering our operations," and that the site will draw non-potable brackish groundwater rather than drinking or irrigation water. One clause is worth holding onto: the plant is designed to transition to grid-connected service as interconnection allows, which would eventually make this private generator a participant in the market it was built to avoid. The project sits against Amazon's 2019 Climate Pledge to reach net zero by 2040, a target its rising emissions have already pushed further away.

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CleanviewGoogle Cloud Storage (public buckets)Tom's HardwareEngineering News-Record

Jul 30, 2026

The first datacenter power plant built without permits is being made to rebuild itself with them

xAI — operating as SpaceXAI since its merger with Elon Musk's rocket company — agreed with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to a fixed timetable for removing all 69 temporary, mobile gas turbines that power its Colossus 2 data center from Southaven, Mississippi, just across the state line from Memphis. Removal begins as early as August 2026 and must finish by July 2027. What replaces them is not a grid connection: it is a permanent 1.2-gigawatt plant of 41 turbines on the same site, authorized under a Clean Air Act permit the company says was granted in March 2026 after seven months of review, and it is the Mississippi Environmental Quality Permit Board's approval of those 41 turbines that the removal plan depends on. This is the first time an operator that built its own generation without permits has been required to replace it with permitted generation on a regulator's timetable — a conversion, not a retreat. The electrons still come from the same place; what changes is the paperwork and the permanence. The temporary turbines are the subject of a Clean Air Act lawsuit brought in February 2026 by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice for the NAACP and its Mississippi State Conference, alleging they were installed and run without required permits or pollution controls in a county already graded "F" for ozone by the American Lung Association; the U.S. Department of Justice has moved to intervene on the company's side, arguing the litigation threatens national, economic and energy security. xAI frames the order as codifying a good-neighbor commitment and points to selective-catalytic-reduction retrofits, sound walls and silencers. The SELC calls it "a stark reversal" of the company's earlier one-year pledge, negotiated in secret and leaving "dangerous, illegal, and unregulated pollution" running until at least July 2027. Two days earlier Representative Frank Pallone had written to Musk noting the company applied for only 15 turbine permits while operating roughly 60, and citing research putting Colossus 2's turbines at roughly 5,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, 7,000 tons of carbon monoxide, 200 tons of sulfur dioxide and over 40 tons of formaldehyde a year. A SELC-commissioned study estimates $30–44 million in annual regional health damages from the permanent plant. The removal is a commitment, not a completed act, and the agreed order binds the company to Mississippi regulators while much of the affected population lives across the line in Tennessee.

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xAIBroadband BreakfastMemphis FlyerThe 901 ReportHarvard Law ReviewWMC Action News 5

Jul 30, 2026

Current monitoring shows that local air quality continues to meet or exceed EPA standards.

— xAI

SpaceXAI's own account of its Southaven turbines, recorded as a company claim rather than a fact: an operator's statement about its own facility's consequences stays a statement on this page until the record shows otherwise. In the same 30 July statement the company said it is retrofitting its mobile turbines with selective-catalytic-reduction devices that convert nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and water, and committed to remove all 69 temporary turbines by July 2027.

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xAIMemphis FlyerWMC Action News 5

Earlier this year

Jul 22, 2026The turbine queue now runs to 2031, and the machines datacenters want are the expensive ones

Jul 16, 2026The EPA says the Acid Rain Program's monitoring doesn't reach off-grid data-center plants

Jul 2, 2026

Georgia orders its first off-grid datacenter power plant to stop building

Georgia's Environmental Protection Division ordered construction halted on the first "pop-up" power plant built to serve a data center in the state, and cited both companies behind it for breaking state law by installing generators without a permit. The plant is going up in Covington, about 40 miles east of downtown Atlanta, built by the Houston firm VoltaGrid; rather than plugging into the grid, it is designed to generate electricity for a data center under construction next door by the developer Serverfarm. The division sent notices of violation to both companies in the first week of July, a day after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that they had begun building dozens of gas engines before obtaining the air permits Georgia and the federal Clean Air Act require. The order is a reminder that the constraint on building your own power plant is not only the turbine supply chain but the permit, and that the permit can arrive after the concrete does — or not at all.

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The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionAxiosWRDW / Atlanta News First (Gray Media)

Jul 1, 2026A federal proposal would let states decide whether the public ever sees a datacenter's generator permits

Jun 26, 2026In Texas, bringing your own power does not get you out of the interconnection queue

Covered since Jun 2026Read it from the start →