Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
203,234 studies31 sourcesUpdated 45 min ago
PreprintarXiv licencearXiv

Temporary gas turbines powering a US AI data center created a cross-state air pollution hotspot

  • Will W. Qiang
  • Bo Huang
  • Xingjian Liu
  • Harry F. Lee
Open at sourcePDFDOICite

Abstract

Data centers increasingly use on-site gas turbines that regulators can treat as temporary. Two satellites show the fleet powering SpaceXAI's Colossus 2 raised local nitrogen dioxide columns by about half as it expanded, the most anomalous increase among 656 urban locations nationwide since 2020. Mississippi authorized the fleet, but two-thirds of the hotspot's 116,000 mostly Black residents live in Tennessee, and the hotspot contains no regulatory nitrogen dioxide monitor. The fleet causes an estimated four premature deaths yearly, valued at $49 million, over 80% outside Mississippi and nearly all from units without selective catalytic reduction. On new turbines, this control's benefits exceed costs over the service life, but not over temporary stays or for in-state damages alone. Standards following the equipment could recover these benefits.

Related

  1. Impact of proposed wind turbines on seismic monitoring stations at the Xiaolangdi Reservoir
    Liwei Wei, Cunxiang Cao, Xiaoqing Gan +4
    Scientific ReportsPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textGeophysics & seismologyCrossref
  2. Limitations and alternatives to the salmonid mortality formulae for Francis turbines proposed by Tomanova et al. (2023)
    Sylvie Tomanova, Dominique Courret, Sylvain Richard +1
    Knowledge and Management of Aquatic EcosystemsPeer-reviewedCC BY-ND 4.0Full textEcologyEnvironmental science & pollutionHAL
  3. Hurricane Laura-induced loads on wind turbines -- Part I: High-fidelity modeling and sensitivity to turbulent inflow conditions
    Miguel Sanchez-Gomez, Lucas Carmo, Matthew Churchfield +2
    arXivPreprintCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textAtmospheric science & meteorologyFluid dynamicsarXiv
  4. Optimising bat-friendly curtailment algorithms for wind turbines
    Kévin Barré, Kseniia Kravchenko, Thierry Chambert +8
    Journal of Environmental ManagementPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-SA 4.0Full textEcologyEnvironmental science & pollutionHAL
  5. Long-term spatiotemporal dynamics, hotspot persistence, and extreme AOD days over Bursa, Türkiye
    Burak Caliskan
    Scientific ReportsPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textClimate scienceCrossref

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{qiang2026temporary,
  title = {{Temporary gas turbines powering a US AI data center created a cross-state air pollution hotspot}},
  author = {Will W. Qiang and Bo Huang and Xingjian Liu and Harry F. Lee},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06115},
  eprint = {2611.06115},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06115},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - Temporary gas turbines powering a US AI data center created a cross-state air pollution hotspot
AU  - Will W. Qiang
AU  - Bo Huang
AU  - Xingjian Liu
AU  - Harry F. Lee
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/04
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06115
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06115
AB  - Data centers increasingly use on-site gas turbines that regulators can treat as temporary. Two satellites show the fleet powering SpaceXAI's Colossus 2 raised local nitrogen dioxide columns by about half as it expanded, the most anomalous increase among 656 urban locations nationwide since 2020. Mississippi authorized the fleet, but two-thirds of the hotspot's 116,000 mostly Black residents live in Tennessee, and the hotspot contains no regulatory nitrogen dioxide monitor. The fleet causes an estimated four premature deaths yearly, valued at $49 million, over 80% outside Mississippi and nearly all from units without selective catalytic reduction. On new turbines, this control's benefits exceed costs over the service life, but not over temporary stays or for in-state damages alone. Standards following the equipment could recover these benefits.
ER  -