With Data Centers, What You Don't See Can Hurt You

By Maurice Carter, Co-Founder & Current President

"Regardless of how you feel about AI itself, or the way that it's being rolled out, one thing is inescapable," says the narrator of a new PBS documentary. "Despite tech companies making promises about renewable energy and sustainable technology, much of this massive AI expansion is still being powered by fossil fuels."

We know. Because -- as we reported back in December -- a data center developer (Serverfarm) and an energy company (VoltaGrid) are partnering to install and operate 33 fossil gas-fired engines to power a data center on Hazelbrand Road in Covington. If you live here, this PBS Digital Studios Overview documentary We Saw What AI Data Centers Don't Want You to See is essential viewing.  In this episode, investigative reporter Evan Simon uses a drone fitted with a thermal imaging camera to expose the air pollution emanating from the Stargate Data Center in Abilene, TX.

"Your AI query likely pings a data center like this full of millions of power hungry processing chips, running the chatbots agents and other tools that millions of people interact with every day," says the narrator. "But to power those operations data centers around the country are increasingly relying on their own custom built gas power plants. The Stargate Data Center already has 62 diesel generators and 10 gas powered turbines on site with plans for 41 more. This will make it one of the largest fossil fuel power plants of any kind in Texas, and it's just to power this data center."

Built Here on a Smaller Scale, but with Dirtier Engines

Describing the thermal images his drone is capturing at the Stargate Data Center in Abilene, Simon explains:  "These air pollutants, they don't go up into the atmosphere and go away. We know that these facilities are emitting volatile organic compounds, NOs and particulate matter, and the health impacts are respiratory, cardiovascular -- you know, people with asthma or children and elderly people in these communities."

The Serverfarm/VoltaGrid project in Covington is smaller in terms of equipment -- 33 reciprocating internal combustion engines (RICE) burning fossil gas, two gas-fired fuel heaters, and 37 backup diesel generators.  But it is important to note that RICE units emit higher quantities of harmful pollutants like methane, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, and particulate pollution than gas turbines like those used in Texas.

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Standing Up Now to Protect Our Community

For VoltaGrid to operate their power plant and supply electricity to the Serverfarm data center, the Georgia Environmental Projection Division (EPD) Air Protection Branch must issue an Air Permit.  And, although a draft permit was issued in March, the final is still pending.  Sustainable Newton is working with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) to challenge VoltaGrid's plans and press EPD to place more restrictive conditions on them to protect community health.  To date, we have:

• Joined SELC and Altamaha River Keeper last December to file comments regarding VoltaGrid's  application for permit.
• Joined again to file comments on the draft permit in March.
• Submitted our own letter also in March underscoring our objections to the draft permit.

As noted in the letter submitted by SELC on our behalf on March 13, the formaldehyde levels VoltaGrid projects from its gas engines are especially concerning.  Our letter states:

"[P]er Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s (EPD) draft permit Narrative, air pollution from this facility will cause ambient levels of formaldehyde that equal EPD’s maximum allowable concentration. Formaldehyde is both toxic and 'carcinogenic to humans by the inhalation route of exposure;' EPD’s ambient standard is thus set to limit cancer risks to those surrounding facilities like VoltaGrid, yet despite VoltaGrid’s modeling showing it will equal the maximum allowable levels of carcinogenic formaldehyde, EPD is not taking any further steps to address cancer risks."

The cancer risks posed by formaldehyde are compound by our community's prior exposure to elevated levels of the chemical compound ethylene oxide (EtO) leaking from the Becton Dickinson sterilizer facility and associated warehouse that was included in EPA findings in 2018 and confirmed by subsequent measurements in 2019.  As our letter to EPD states:  "EPA has also singled out Covington as a place 'where risks of cancer were potentially elevated.'”

Our third major concern hinges on the fact that VoltaGrid applied for a permit to operate as a separate business, distinct from Serverfarm.  And, as a result, did not include emissions from the Serverfarm data center itself (including the 37 diesel backup generators they will operate).  We take exception with the fact that EPD has issued a draft permit allowing that. In their letter on our behalf, SELC argues "EPD must permit VoltaGrid and the co-located Serverfarm datacenter as a single source; in particular, it appears that the proposed arrangement between the two entities violates Georgia’s electric utility laws and raises significant doubts that the two entities will operate independently."  If required to permit as one operation, the VoltaGrid/Serverfarm project would fall within levels requiring higher standards and oversight under federal law.

In response to our recent phone inquiry, officials in EPD's Air Protection Branch  indicated they are still evaluating all comments.  We will await their further action before deciding what next steps we must take with this project.

(We also continue to monitor permitting and other announcements related to the Amazon Data Services data center campus on Alcovy Road.)

 The best possible time to implement more robust local laws governing data centers would have been a couple of years ago.  But the second best time is now.

Navigating a Difficult Present While Pursuing a Better Future (Hopefully)

Both the Serverfarm/VoltaGrid data center and the Amazon Data Services project were initiated well before the City of Covington enacted a moratorium in January to pause accepting data center permit applications.  Prior to that, City of Covington ordinances permitted data centers by right, with no special conditions, in both M1 (Light Industrial) and M2 (Heavy Industrial) zoning districts.  As such, any new ordinances the city adopts now will only apply to future additions or other major changes to those projects.  The best possible time to implement more robust local laws governing data centers would have been a couple of years ago.  But the second best time is now.

Newton County has two operational data centers -- both in Newton County and owned by Meta.  Inside the Covington city limits, we currently have the two active projects mentioned above.  But multiple data center developers denied by the county have sought in recent years to have their property annexed into either the City of Covington or Social Circle, which necessitated both the Covington City Council and the Newton County Board of Commissioners enacting a moratorium earlier this year suspending acceptance of new data center permit applications.  The goal of each moratorium is to allow local governments to amend existing ordinances and place tighter controls for where and how data centers are built.  Covington's is currently set to expire on August 4, while the county moratorium is scheduled to be in effect until October 7.  By law, however, the moratoria and ordinance changes under consideration would not apply to the two projects initiated under prior laws.

Our Sustainable Newton Environmental Hazards Committee is actively engaged in both local government efforts to rewrite ordinances.  Using our contacts with experts like the attorneys at SELC and activists in other Georgia communities, we have explored the issues, developed policy recommendations, and provided examples of good ordinances from other cities and counties.

Leveraging resources like the Georgia Data Center Ordinance Hub from the Energy Policy & Innovation Center at Georgia Tech, we've been able to suggest best practices and proven solutions from across Georgia and the US. The hub is well organized and presented in a format that both policy makers and engaged citizens can understand.  It's structured into five main areas:
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• Site Planning & Building Design -- including building placement, size, & setbacks.
• Infrastructure & Utilities -- covering power sources, utility infrastructure, renewable energy, water, sewerage, and storm water runoff.
• Environmental & Community Protections -- including noise limits, buffers, environmental impacts, and community engagements.
• Public Safety & Security -- addressing public safety, emergency management, lighting, etc.
• Lifecycle Governance -- covering requirements for decommissioning data centers after ceasing operations.

There's even a section showing which local governments have moratoria in effect, including the start and end dates.  The list is not all-inclusive, but it does reflect the extent to which local governments are recognizing the need to be more prescriptive about where and how data centers are permitted to be built.

Sometimes, the best you can do is yell "STOP!!!"  But these temporary pauses can't protect our community indefinitely. We must take advantage of every resource, listen to experts, and make future decisions with transparency as a core principle of doing business.  In that vein, we're encouraged that the draft ordinances working their way through the City of Covington Planning & Development Department and the city's Planning Commission include a provision that every proposed new data center must have at least one public meeting to addressed a standard set of questions before a permit is considered.  (We're pushing for two meetings, but even just one is a major step forward for transparency and respecting/protecting neighbors.)

In the City of Covington, the Planning & Development Department is working with the city's Planning Commission to craft the wording for text changes they will recommend the City Council to adopt into the city's current ordinances.  The commission will discuss those changes again at their next meeting on  July 14 and must host a public hearing before passing their recommendations on to the City Council.  After that, the City Council must host a first reading and a public hearing, followed by as second reading at another city council meeting, before the changes can be adopted as law.  Based on that, the new laws could take effect no sooner than August 17.  So the expiration for the city's data center moratorium will likely be extended past August 4.

In the county, new data center regulations are being worked as part of the county's Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), which is being developed by consultants from Kending & Keast, working under direction of a steering committed appointed by the Board of Commissioners.  Under the current schedule, a public hearing is tentatively scheduled for this July.

We will do our best to keep you apprised of developments with both the City of Covington and Newton County, but it would be wise to also monitor these processes yourself and to attend the public meetings where your input can be provided through comments. You can bet developers wanting to build data centers in our community will be in attendance and watching out for their interests.  It's up to you (and us) to ensure the needs of the pubic are also heard, respected, and honored.

Servers in Tents, Illegal Gas-fired Power Plants, & Heat Islands

Nothing underscores better why we must get this right than to witness what's happening around the country as AI Tech companies and their data center developers deploy at breakneck speed, proving money is no object in their quest for first to market.  We see from the PBS documentary what is happening in Abilene with Stargate. Consider also, what industry analyst Michael Thomas reports about what Meta is doing in Ohio with his Cleanview newsletter story about "the Mad Max phase of the AI boom":

Mark Zuckerberg recently ditched the data center designs that Meta had perfected over the last decade and told his team to stick tens of thousands of chips in tents outside their data center in New Albany, Ohio. Each of these chips costs about $60,000. Zuckerberg plans to stick billions of dollars worth of them in the tents.

The strategy has helped cut the time to build compute in half. The first five buildings at Meta’s New Albany, Ohio data center took between two and three years to build. Meta started building five ~125,000 square foot tents between April and June of 2026, according to city permits. Satellite images show the structures have all been built.

To power those “rapid deployment structures”, as they are officially named, Meta signed a 10-year deal with Williams to build a pair of 200 MW off-grid power plants. Those power plants began construction about a year ago and are nearly complete.

In a recent post for his Climate & Energy blog, Norwegian freelance analyst and writer Keshan Joshi criticized AI tech company Anthropic for their agreement to host their AI engines at xAI's Colossus data centers in Memphis, TN and northern Mississippi.  Elon Musk's xAI company has faced multiple lawsuits over unpermitted gas turbines operating to power the data centers. But, according to Joshi, what's happening with Colossus is the norm, not the exception, for the industry.  He writes:

Yes: there are many more data centres with a less-bad environmental footprint. But Colossus 1 is far from the worst. There are more than 800 data centre projects with a worse PM2.5 air pollution footprint, for instance. More than 600 have a higher health cost. Most of the harm is really skewed towards these massive, high-polluting data centre megaprojects. There are 1,358 projects on the list. The top 50% of emissions are concentrated in the first 58 projects on that list.

Another emerging concern with data centers are studies finding waste heat from a large data center can create large "heat islands" around them.  In a recenter article published in Forbe's, University of Georgia professor and scientist Dr. Marshall Shepherd wrote about one such study co-authored by a colleague in Arizona, which found found substantial warming downwind from four Phoenix data centers, ranging from 1.5 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit as much as 500 meters from the facilities.  As Dr. Shepherd's colleague, David Sailor writes:

Data centers consume massive amounts of energy, and hence emit massive amounts of waste heat, but their direct thermal impact on nearby neighborhoods has remained largely unmeasured—until now. A single 169 MW data center campus rejects waste heat equivalent to that emitted by nearly 200,000 households, concentrated in an area equivalent to less than a few hundred residential parcels.

Another study, conducted by the Earth Observation group at the University of Cambridge and reported by CNN, looked at more than 6,000 data centers located away from large urban areas, using 20 years of historical temperature data to determine how much surrounding surfaces area temperatures warmed after the data centers were built.  That team found surface temperatures increased an average of 3.6°F once the  data center started operations and, in some cases, by up to 16.4°F.

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The potential consequences of large data centers must not to be taken lightly. The point is not that all data center developers and AI tech executives are "bad apples."  But there are bad actors -- moving swiftly and cutting corners, with little to no regard for financial costs.  And they certainly do not care about impacts to  our quality of life and the environment we'll be left to live in when they are done with us.

Where things go from here hinges on how well our local officials write and enforce the laws that will take effect when current moratoria are lifted.  The stakes are incredibly high, and the margin for error is essentially zero.  We commend local officials for calling time out and encourage them to seek all of the advice and counsel they can tap into to best protect our community and our shared future.