xAI is running 59 unpermitted gas turbines, twice what it has admitted

Emails between regulators and xAI’s consultants put most of the turbines in Southaven, Mississippi. Within five miles on the Tennessee side, about 94% of residents are Black.

Ervin Laws lives in Colonial Hills, a neighbourhood in Southaven, Mississippi, where residents say the turbines running around the clock sound like jet engines.

“I can’t do anything about it, because he’s got more money than me,” he told Reuters, meaning Elon Musk. The turbines in question, according to correspondence between regulators and xAI’s representatives, number 59, and none of them holds a federal clean air permit.

That figure, published on Tuesday, is roughly double what the company has publicly acknowledged. xAI said in January that it was running 27 unpermitted turbines for its Colossus 2 project, and has argued throughout that no permits are required.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The geography matters, and it is easy to get wrong. Colossus 2, the data centre supporting Grok and xAI’s other systems, sits in Memphis, Tennessee.

At least 57 of the turbines powering it sit in Southaven, Mississippi, a few minutes over the state line, where residents of the neighbouring state have no standing in the permitting process at all. Two more were installed at an unidentified site.

Mississippi regulators did issue a permit in March for 41 permanent gas turbines at the site, three weeks after the state’s only public hearing on the project. The 59 now running are separate, and unpermitted.

The emails, obtained under a public records request, came from Trinity Consultants, acting for xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech, to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. They included manufacturer emissions profiles for 32 of the 59 turbines.

Working from those profiles, Reuters calculated that the 30 units at Southaven alone could emit close to 2,500 short tons of nitrogen oxides a year, along with 4,000 short tons of carbon monoxide and 22 tons of formaldehyde, assuming continuous operation at 80% of capacity, a load the EPA describes as typical for efficiency.

Those are potential emissions, calculated from equipment specifications rather than measured at the stack, and they cover roughly half the plant. The Clean Air Act threshold that triggers federal permitting is 100 short tons a year.

Nicholas Mailloux, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said a facility emitting at that rate would rank among the 25 highest nitrogen oxide emitters of any US gas plant, judged against the EPA’s actual-emissions data.

The demographic picture around the site is stark. Within five miles of the turbines in DeSoto County, Mississippi, about 46% of residents are Black, against 33% countywide. Across the line in Shelby County, Tennessee, the figure within the same radius is about 94%, against 52% for the county.

In 27 of the 28 census tracts inside that radius, estimated asthma rates run above their respective countywide levels, and in 24 the same is true of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Both counties have previously failed federal ozone standards.

xAI did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment, and neither the state regulator nor the EPA answered questions about pollution effects on communities of colour. In court filings, xAI and Mississippi have argued the turbines are exempt because they are mobile units intended to run onsite for less than a year.

MDEQ told Reuters it “has determined that portable/temporary turbines do not require an air permit”. The EPA said in January that temporary turbines exceeding emissions thresholds must be permitted, and now says it is weighing “regulatory flexibilities” for portable units.

The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center, represented by Earthjustice, sued xAI in April to halt the turbines.

“The scale of it is astonishing,” said Patrick Anderson, an SELC attorney. In June the Justice Department intervened on xAI’s side, arguing that curbing the turbines could threaten national security because Grok supports US military operations, including in Iran. Residents in Southaven have separately sued over the noise.

Sarah Gladney, 72, lives in Boxtown, the historically Black Memphis neighbourhood a few miles from the original Colossus, built in 2024. “Once they got their foot in the door in Memphis, I feel like it’s going to be a continuous movement of xAI into these other communities,” she said.

The company’s appetite for gas is not in dispute; SpaceX’s IPO filing, which now covers xAI, set it beside Tesla’s solar business in the same document.