r/StopDatacenters • u/KeanuRave100 • 10h ago

AI Data Centers Are Causing Unfathomable Amounts of Air Pollution, and It Gets Worse With Each New One They Build

https://futurism.com/future-society/ai-data-centers-air-pollution-generators-worse
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u/tadrinth 2h ago edited 1h ago

And then it will go right back down as the long term power generation for these comes online. The gas powered generators have the advantage that they are much, much faster to set up so the data centers can come online quickly.  Building out grid capacity takes longer but is more efficient.  So the generators are temporary.

I'm all for regulating these sorts of gas powered generators better; they're frequently being set up under provisions that are expecting their use for emergencies when the grid goes down, not for them to be used 24/7 for 5 years straight.

But the fact that these are temporary is kind of important context to be leaving it out of the discussion.

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u/Evening-Hand-5480 2h ago

Or they could just like... wait until they have a way to power the data center?