EPA Guts Clean Air Rules, Enables AI Data Center Pollution

The administration’s response to growing opposition to AI data centers has been to limit the public’s right to be heard, and to weaken environmental regulations. Last year, the administration vowed to repeal or weaken any regulations that hinder AI deployment and to promote the rapid buildout of data centers across the United States. The assault on the Clean Air Act on behalf of AI data centers escalated in recent months, including four actions that would severely undermine key pollution protections, exclude the public, and speed the construction of data centers and the power plants that supply their electricity.

Cutting out the public and bypassing the Clean Air Act

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeks to eliminate a longstanding requirement that the public be notified and have input on applications for air pollution permits for a variety of industrial facilities, including some new AI data centers and their power plants. This would mean residents might not even learn about air pollution at proposed new AI data centers before construction starts. This type of “minor source” permit applies to all kinds of facilities, from chemical plants to sterilizers to hazardous waste combustors. The pollution from these facilities is often not “minor,” as they may still emit up to 250 tons of dangerous pollutants per year.

Since these permits require less stringent review, companies powering AI data centers may seek to artificially divide large projects into smaller ones to qualify for a so-called “minor” permit that would minimize pollution reductions required under law. This loophole has helped to fuel the recent explosion of AI data centers and health- and climate-harming pollution. If finalized, the administration’s new rule will supercharge the existing loophole by keeping the public in the dark about plans for new industrial pollution in their backyard.

EPA’s longstanding requirement allowing public participation reflects the reality that public review improves permitting decisions by identifying underestimated emissions, inadequate pollution limits, insufficient air quality impacts analyses, and other errors before construction begins. EPA’s proposal would instead authorize state and local air agencies to issue preconstruction air pollution permits without any public notice or opportunity for comment. Environmental and public health groups filed extensive comments opposing EPA’s proposal.

Exempting plants from acid rain limits

In July, EPA released a memo that proposed to exempt generators that are not connected to the grid from acid rain requirements. AI data centers are trying to evade oversight by utility regulators by building their own private power plants. Excluding non-grid-connected power plants from acid rain requirements violates the Clean Air Act and has attracted the opposition of members of Congress as well as environmental organizations. Earthjustice wrote to EPA to oppose the proposal as unlawful under the Clean Air Act.

Polluting places that already fail to meet air quality standards

In July, EPA issued a guidance document to allow AI data centers and other developers otherwise subject to New Source Review standards to delay obtaining legally required offsetting emission reductions until the plant is operating, instead of at the time of permitting. The guidance would limit communities’ ability to oppose projects that threaten their air quality and health. This new guidance violates Clean Air Act requirements that enforceable offsetting reductions be secured before issuance of construction permits. The guidance also departs from EPA’s past practice, which acknowledged the difficulty in enforcing the offset requirement after a plant is constructed.

For example, Earthjustice opposes the use of offset credits for a more than 4GW gas-fired power plant being built to serve an Amazon AI data center on the location of a former coal plant in Homer City, Pennsylvania. Earthjustice objected to emissions credits where Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection had failed to identify the source of emission reductions for a gas-fired power plant that emit over 300 tons of smog-causing volatile organic compounds a year. Under the administration’s new proposal, communities would effectively be blocked from fighting offsets at these and other kinds of industrial projects before they begin operating.

Starting construction without permits

In May, EPA proposed a rule to allow data centers, power plants, and other industrial facilities to begin construction work before obtaining required air permits. New facilities that would be major sources of air pollution must go through an extensive process to review their emissions and pollution controls; to consider alternatives as well as the costs and benefits of the project; to allow for public participation; and to ensure protection of air quality for nearby and downwind residents. Earthjustice and many other environmental and public health groups filed detailed comments opposing the proposal to accelerate the siting of data centers and power plants that would have a range of harmful environmental and public health effects. EPA has yet to issue a final rule and response to comments.

The administration seeks to promote the rapid buildout of data centers across the United States and pledges to expedite permitting for AI data centers by weakening Clean Air Act regulations, promising to “identify, revise, or repeal regulations, rules, memoranda, administrative orders, guidance documents, policy statements, and interagency agreements that unnecessarily hinder AI development or deployment.”

Everyone deserves clean air and has a right to know about plans to increase harmful industrial pollution in their community. Instead, the EPA continues to abandon its mandate to protect our health, instead offering handouts to industrial polluters and AI data centers. Earthjustice will continue to fight these efforts to erode our rights and our environmental laws.