Musk’s AI Data Centers, Allegedly Needed To Power Tesla’s Alleged Robotaxis, Are A Polluting Mess

Elon Musk may have originally sold Tesla to the public as a green company that cared about the environment, but it’s been a long time since that was the case. And it’s not because electric vehicles aren’t actually good for the environment, as much as they’re simply less bad than gas-powered alternatives. Tesla’s Fremont factory has been sued for repeatedly violating the Clean Air Act and was recently shown to be one of the dirtiest in California, second only to an oil refining company. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Musk’s artificial intelligence company is also a polluting mess, as Politico recently reported.

Politico didn’t pull any punches, either, opening its report with these three sentences:

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is belching smog-forming pollution into an area of South Memphis that already leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma.

None of the 35 methane gas turbines that help power xAI’s massive supercomputer is equipped with pollution controls typically required by federal rules.

The company has no Clean Air Act permits.

The main pollutant the Politico report accuses Musk’s AI company of producing is the same NOx that got Volkswagen in so much trouble a decade ago. Instead of being spread out around the world, though, it’s all concentrated in South Memphis, earning it the distinction of becoming one of Shelby County’s largest polluters in less than a year. That’s saying a lot, too, since that area of the city already has terrible air quality from the smog.

While it’s difficult to determine exactly how much pollution Musk’s AI center spews into the air, but with an estimated rate between 1,200 to 2,000 tons a year, the Southern Environmental Law Center says it’s even dirtier than the nearby natural gas-powered power plant and oil refinery.

In addition to spewing smog-forming pollution, Musk’s AI center also consumes a mind-boggling amount of power. Those turbines produce enough power for roughly 280,000 homes, and he’s had to rely on them because powering his AI servers requires more electricity than the grid can currently provide. Because they’re allegedly temporary, xAI told the Memphis Chamber of Commerce they don’t require permits. Several environmental groups and former EPA officials, however, told Politico that argument relies on a loophole in federal regulations and shouldn’t apply here because they’re too large.

Additionally, back in January, xAI changed its tune and decided 15 of the turbines will be permanent and have applied for permits that would allow them to do so. Until the permits are approved, though, they don’t have any plans to add pollution controls. The former head of the EPA’s air enforcement division, Bruce Buckheit, told Politico that approach violates the Clean Air Act and that the turbines should’ve had pollution controls installed right out of the gate, saying, “There needs to be a permit beforehand. You don’t just get that first year for free.”

In addition to the NOx, the turbines also release plenty of other pollutants you wouldn’t want your children breathing in, including formaldehyde. Still, Elon Musk has yet to comment, at least publicly, on how terrible his AI center is for the environment. Neither Musk nor any of his representatives ever responded to Politico‘s multiple requests for a statement. 

The people who live in nearby Boxtown, however, are already dealing with the consequences of yet another dirty industrial facility spewing pollution into the air they breathe and making their complaints known:

Today, more than 90 percent of residents living in Boxtown’s ZIP code are Black, with a median household income of $36,000, according to the Census Bureau. It’s also home to more than 17 industrial facilities — some of which share an industrial park with xAI — that release enough toxic pollution to require registration with EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory.

“I can’t breathe at home, it smells like gas outside,” Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys said through tears, holding up her asthma inhaler during a public hearing about the turbines on April 25. “How come I can’t breathe at home and y’all get to breathe at home?”

Humphreys wasn’t the only resident to complain about the breathing and various health problems they developed while living in the area. And while some of their conditions predate the AI center, the NOx it spews into the air has been directly shown to make lung conditions worse. They want the Shelby County Department of Health to step in and at least force xAI to get rid of the turbines, with many showing off their inhalers and oxygen tanks as proof the pollution hurts their health. The bigger problem, though, is that Memphis treats the area like a “sacrifice zone” and has done so for years.

“It’s amazing when you grow up and realize how redlining has allowed these industries to kill your family,” KeShaun Pearson, head of the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution, told Politico. “Elon Musk is a representation of the oligarchy we already knew was operating under Jim Crow. It’s a familiar evil.” Pearson also blamed air pollution for the cancers that killed both his grandmothers in their 60s.

Previously, the Environmental Protection Agency might have stepped in, but don’t look for that to happen anytime soon. The current Republican administration is all-in on AI and has no use for environmental protections. And while the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” has yet to find any of the fraud it was ostensibly set up to root out — after all, if it had found any fraud, we would have seen actual arrests by now — it’s done a great job at hollowing out the EPA’s ability to stop companies from polluting without restraint. 

Musk has fired or reassigned hundreds of EPA workers who were previously focused on environmental justice initiatives. They’ve also eliminated programs that were initially put in place to help reduce the damage done to poor communities, largely made up of residents who aren’t white. Meanwhile, Lee Zeldin, the Republican administrator working with Musk to gut the EPA, has also announced plans to stop enforcing clean air regulations that might make life more difficult (read: slightly less profitable) for AI startups.

“Data centers are a highly competitive space, and other companies are watching what xAI does,” Amanda Garcia, senior attorney for the SELC, told Politico. “Right now, what xAI is doing is essentially running a power plant without a permit, and it has a real risk of harming people’s health.”

Currently, xAI’s main focus is Grok, a generative AI model that Musk created to be “anti-woke.” Want to make an image of, say, Mickey Mouse wearing a Nazi uniform? Grok will do exactly that. But Elon Musk’s plans don’t stop there. He’s also decided that Tesla, his electric car company, is now an AI and robotics company, and he’s banking the entire company’s future on it.

As long as Texas is willing to sacrifice its residents’ safety to make Musk happy, he’s still allegedly moving ahead with his robotaxi plans, and those heavily depend on AI. Instead of using lidar like every other automaker trying to build self-driving cars, Musk’s self-driving tech only uses cameras. That’s not only less safe than lidar-equipped systems but also requires massive amounts of image processing to function. Musk’s other big idea is humanoid robots, and his goal is to sell billions of them. And, wouldn’t you know it, those also need AI to function. 

There are plenty of reasons to believe Tesla won’t actually deploy its robotaxi army in large numbers anytime soon, and it’s hard to find many use cases for humanoid robots, but those are his goals, and he’s going to need massive amounts of AI processing power to get there. As the xAI facility in Memphis shows, he also couldn’t possibly care less about the environment or the people hurt by dirty, polluted air, and if he’s allowed to move forward, it’s only going to get worse. 

Even if you think the people of Boxtown deserve their health problems for being poor, polluted air doesn’t exactly stay in one place. As Republicans rush to make AI-obsessed billionaires happy, eventually, the air they pollute will reach you, too. But at least you can put Sydney Sweeney in a MAGA hat, right?

There’s also a lot more to the Politico report, and it’s definitely worth your time to read the whole thing, so be sure to head over there and do exactly that.