By Maurice Carter, Sustainable Newton Co-Founder & President

Recent local events have conspired to keep us talking about data centers -- which remain a pressing issue for our community. But from a slightly broader perspective today, I'm must raise a different hot topic today:  Our world is on fire.

Connecting the dots from climate change to raging wildfires, endless waves of deadly extreme heat, violent tornado outbreaks, and devastating flash floods feels like stating the obvious. But if it was obvious, we wouldn't be in the hellscape we find ourselves in now.

August is still days away, but this brutal year has already made our deepening climate crisis impossible to ignore. Unprecedented May heat baked Europe before summer even arrived and was soon surpassed by an even more oppressive, extended heat dome in late June that's estimated to have killed ~14,000 people. In mid-July, a similar weather system scorched the American West and Central Plains, with highs of 115° F in parts of Montana.  This week, as I write, an intense heat dome is parked over the central US, producing heat indices well over 100°F from northern Minnesota down the Mississippi Gulf Coast and westward all the way to California and Nevada. Highs in the Southwest are expected to reach 120°F this week.  Meanwhile, the year's fourth extreme heat event is building in Europe.

A World on Fire

The combined effects of prolonged extreme heat and drought have made kindling of much Europe, the Western US, and Canada -- breeding conditions for the massive wildfires burn now out of control.  As one forestry expert in Spain told a Bloomberg reporter:  "These are fires that burn with the intensity of several atomic bombs and, as such, putting them out is extremely complex."  It’s a familiar pattern even to residents of South Georgia and North Florida who endured evacuations and property losses when wildfires scorched tens of thousands of acres this spring, also brought on by heatwaves and exceptional drought.

​Fingerprints of climate change are all over the European wildfires, and also blazes burning across North America.  When smoke from Canadian fires filled US skies, President Trump sought to blame Canadian officials and even threatened to implement punitive tariffs.  Which led climate scientist Zeke Hausfather to write a post for Carbon Brief proving the climate change connection and refuting arguments the blazes are primarily a result of forest mismanagement.  "The surge in Canadian burning tracks temperature with striking consistency, and hotter, drier fire seasons burn far more forest (+80% per 1C)," he wrote.  "The biggest fire years are almost universally hotter and drier, over 90% of the record 2023 burn was remote lightning fire, and the attribution studies tie these extremes to a warmer atmosphere without needing to invoke forest management at all."
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Watch this senior expert with the European Forest Institute show frustration when asked if fires raging now in France and Spain are "unprecedented"?  (Short answer: Not anymore.) For him -- and more than 99% of all climate scientists --  the links between human-caused climate change and extreme weather such as wildfires are undeniable.

I testified Wednesday, on behalf of Sustainable Newton, in a virtual public hearing hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where I opposed rules changes EPA is considering that would effectively eliminate public notice and comment requirements in most air pollution permit proceedings.

The regulations EPA seeks to revise have been in effect under the federal Clean Air Act since 1973.  They require states to provide public notice and at least a 30-day comment period on pre-construction permits for new and modified stationary air pollution sources.  In Georgia, that process is managed by the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD).  Federally mandated  notifications from EPD are why Sustainable Newton and our partners at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SECL) and Altamaha Riverkeeper were made aware last November of applications for air permits filed by a Houston-based energy company, VoltaGrid, seeking to construct a methane-fired pop-up power plant to serve electricity for a data center on Hazelbrand Road being built by Serverfarm.  As allowed by law, we commented on the application in December and submitted comments again in March, raising issues with the draft permit EPD published for comment.

In June, Sustainable Newton, SELC, and Altamaha Riverkeeper sent aerial photographs and other evidence to EPD, alerting them to unpermitted emissions sources being constructed by VoltaGrid and Serverfarm -- in direct violation of state and federal law. EPD agreed, sending notices of violation to both companies and ordering VoltaGrid to stop work on "air pollution emissions sources and/or control equipment."  We've also since petitioned the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to determine if VoltaGrid's electricity sales to Serverfarm are even legal in Georgia.

As I stressed in my testimony on Wednesday:

"None of this would have happened had Sustainable Newton and our partners not been notified through the New Source Review process presently required for minor sources. Nonprofits like ours rely on a transparent review process giving local communities an opportunity to hold polluters accountable.  Without that, people suffer."

When we last posted on June 29, Sustainable Newton had joined the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and Altamaha Riverkeeper to file a complaint with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) on June 25, alerting them to apparently unpermitted construction activity at the Hazelbrand Road site where Houston-based energy company VoltaGrid is building a methane-fired power plant to provide electricity to Serverfarm data center next door. 

On July 2, following their investigation, EPD issued a separate Notice of Violation letter to each company.  The letter to VoltaGrid included an order that "the Company must stop all remaining construction of air pollution emissions sources and/or control equipment until such time that an air quality permit is issued for the construction and operation of the Facility."  Serverfarm was allowed to continue work because EPD issued a permit for their 37 diesel backup generators on June 29.  However, both Serverfarm and VoltaGrid are required to respond with additional information with in 15 days and were told in the letter that "the Company is not relieved in any way from liability for civil penalties pursuant to Section 23 of the Georgia Air Quality Act by submitting the requested information."

Today, in a separate-but-related matter, Sustainable Newton and SELC petitioned the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) asking them to determine whether to investigate VoltaGrid's stated plans to generate and sell electricity to the Serverfarm data center to decide if they violate the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act and the Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act.