Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Trump paid a wind farm company $1,200,000,000 of taxpayer money to stop building a wind farm
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New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
71–80 of 296 posts
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#72So even when xAI (which is now Tesla? Or SpaceX maybe?) was "operating dozens of unregulated gas turbines that worsen the air quality in one of the most polluted parts of the country"[0] this didn't place them above this new Amazon not-even-built-yet data center? Are they competing who can destroy the earth the fastest or what's going on? - [0] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/musks-xai-is-being-sued-ov...
It seems wrong that Amazon should get in trouble for this when it was XAI that began this new race to the bottom. Peoplecheered xAI on and admired how quickly they were able to move, without much regard to the methods or legality. IMO competitors had no choice but to respond in kind when they see XAI not just getting away with it, but also getting a pass on legal issues.
> It seems wrong that Amazon should get in trouble for this when it was XAI that began this new race to the bottom.
Who gives a shit who started it? The ones who continue engaging in it, should clearly be punished as they're working against humanity's best interest of keeping this planet survivable.
If you're one of the largest companies in the world, constantly brag about how environmental friendly you are and how much you care about "sustainability" or what the trendy word is today, and you end up building a data center that sets a record in pollution (either directly or indirectly), you're doing something massively fucked up and are misaligned with the rest of the people on this planet.
> Peoplecheered xAI on and admired how quickly they were able to move, without much regard to the methods or legality. IMO competitors had no choice but to respond in kind when they see XAI not just getting away with it, but also getting a pass on legal issues.
I guess this is what late-stage capitalism gives you ultimately, companies who feel like it's fine doing whatever because competitors are also doing whatever. No one I know have been cheering for anything like that, I suggest if you have people cheering about stuff like that near you, get far away.
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#73Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums. Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketin…
> Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Can you tell me how much water a data center uses? If you have strong opinion on the construction of data centers I hope you can answer this basic question about data centers. (Many opposed to them cannot)
Depends on the cooling system, but around 1 to 9L per kwh. [1]
A lot, but not all, of these datacenters are using evaporative cooling, which is what kicks their water usage so high.
So a 40MW datacenter will consume around 4 million liters of water per day if it is evaporatively cooled.
[1] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can find latest ipcc report (short version) here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6... Please share your sources saying it's not getting worse.
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Have you tried to satisfy your open-minded curiosity on this question?
A simple Google search brings up: https://lancetcountdown.org/2025-report/
A couple of excerpts from the front page, without even registering to access the full report:
1.1.5 Heat-related mortality
Failure to curb the warming effects of climate change has seen the rate of heat-related deaths surge 23% since the 1990s, to 546,000 a year.
1.2.1 Wildfires
The risk of wildfires is growing: 2024 saw a record-high 154,000 estimated deaths from wildfire smoke-derived small particulate matter air pollution (PM2.5)
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Texas specifically has heavily politicized and demonized wind power, in spite of having massive successes with it prior to 2016 and being a leading producer of it. Solar isn't as bad, but is still seen as "leftist." The political landscape in TX is vastly more friendly to natural gas. In other words, they are using gas turbines because the politicians are stupid.
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What if..... the USA had a national grid and what if.... they connected solar and wind across the country and for kicks, invested in storage.
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#76Ok. A serious question. I frequently hear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity. Then why are they using gas turbines? Is it because they can generate more power with a smaller real estate footprint?
Renewables require storage because they are bursty - sun goes down, wind stops blowing. This is more expensive than just burning as much nat gas as you need.
How is it more expensive? Any links? Once built out yeah there is maintainance but no need to drill baby drill anymore.
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. It also made solar inverters illegal last week.
> It also made solar inverters illegal last week. That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications. It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1] 1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power... > This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 bil…
Even if I assumed maximum malice, how are these inverters going to perform a coordinated attack on the grid?
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. It also made solar inverters illegal last week.
> It also made solar inverters illegal last week. That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications. It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1] 1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power... > This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 bil…
Do people really believe this stuff? Wow
Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also made solar inverters illegal last week. That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications. It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1] 1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power... > This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 bil…
Even if I assumed maximum malice, how are these inverters going to perform a coordinated attack on the grid?
> Even if I assumed maximum malice, how are these inverters going to perform a coordinated attack on the grid?
They’re network-connected and remotely controllable. The concern is compromise of the vendor/cloud infrastructure allowing large numbers of inverters to be manipulated simultaneously.
Or even Trojan horse style malware is a possibility I suppose (Stuxnet).
That’s basically the threat model that they are using. If people want to argue with that, then that’s something to poke at