When users on X (as Twitter has officially been called since being purchased by Elon Musk) query the platform’s Grok AI chatbot, one bit of a massive computer housed in a South Memphis industrial facility whirs to life. Colossus, as the supercomputer is known, is comprised of 100,000 processors that fill a building the size of 13 football fields. The data center is not far from Boxtown, a neighborhood founded by emancipated enslaved people in the 1860s that has long been overburdened by pollution and other environmental problems.
Running such a massive computer to supply users with a variety of AI slop requires an incredible amount of energy, and climate justice advocates in Memphis say they now know just where it’s all coming from: as many as 35 gas-powered turbine generators, which together can generate the equivalent amount of electricity, and emissions, as an entire power plant. Despite running utility-scale power generation, xAI has only applied for permits to temporarily run 15 generators. As The Guardian reported, the company may be trying to take advantage of a loophole that allows generators to be run without permits so long as they aren’t kept in the same location for more than 364 days. Aerial photos of the facility released by the Southern Environmental Law Center show that the generators are housed in movable tractor-trailers.
“xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities,” said Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement. “These dozens of gas turbines are doing significant harm to the air Memphians breathe every day.”
The Memphis facility had been operating since last June, and the turbine permits were only temporary because xAI had plans to draw power from both Memphis Light, Gas and Water (the local electrical utility) and the Tennessee Valley Authority. But according to SELC, xAI is now able to produce as much power as the entire TVA plant it was going to buy electricity from. And like a big power plant, the xAI facility is now generating plenty of emissions – which aren’t only unpermitted but unmonitored too.
In a letter to the Shelby County Health Department, SELC said that the manufacturer’s specs for the turbines say they produce between 1,200 and 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxides annually, “making the facility likely the largest industrial emitter of NOx in Memphis,” according to the letter. The turbines also emit significant amounts of formaldehyde, a carcinogen, and other toxic chemicals. While all of this is currently happening without any permits, SELC argues that, with the level of emissions that the Colossus facility is capable of, it should require a “major source permit” as required under the Clean Air Act.
Folks in Memphis aren’t the only ones with concerns about the environmental destruction AI brings. MIT News pointed out in January that the data centers behind generative AI models like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Grok “demand a staggering amount of electricity, which leads to increased carbon dioxide emissions and pressures on the electric grid.” The cost for that may end up subsidized by consumers, which is what happened in Georgia when folks found their electrical bills running $200 higher per month due to local centers.
Not only that, at a time of increased drought and freshwater shortages, cooling those data centers requires volumes of water. How much? In 2023, researchers found that every 100-word email GPT-4 generates sucks up the equivalent of one bottle of water.
Meanwhile, Easter May Knox, who lives nearby the data center in Memphis, said at a recent county commissioners public hearing that she just wants to be able to wake up in the morning and open the windows in her home. “But when I open up that window, I smell everything but the right thing, and the right thing is the clean air,” she said.
“Elon Musk has all the money. He’s a millionaire, billionaire, whatever kind of -aire he is. But we need clean air!”
Brent Mayo, a representative of xAI, was also supposed to appear at the recent board of commissioners meeting to answer questions about the turbines. He didn’t show up.
