"Trump administration rolled back clean-air rules to support AI-driven electricity demand. St. Louis faces poor air quality and high health costs as coal plants remain online."
"WEST COLUMBIA, W.Va. — Eric Pinson is obsessed with stacks of electric bills laid out in neat piles on his desk. He runs a camping trailer park in West Virginia not far from a planned data center — all in the shadow of an enormous coal-powered plant that recently received millions in funding from the Trump administration for upgrades.
"Documents show that one of Google’s new data centers would be powered by a natural gas plant that emits millions of tons of emissions each year—an increasingly common trend in the industry."
"In a letter sent Thursday morning, Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley press the Energy Information Agency to mandate annual electricity disclosure for data centers."
"The North American transmission watchdog warns of cascading outages if the largest data centers aren’t regulated."
"Proposed legislation offers perks for data centers that invest in clean energy. A broad coalition supports the bill, but details still need to be hammered out."
"In an effort to quell blowback on data centers, President Donald Trump announced at a White House roundtable on Wednesday the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” a set of nonbinding promises that Big Tech companies signed to keep household utility bills from skyrocketing."
"The surge of new data center development is making people worried. How much energy and water will these resource-hungry centers consume? Will they drive new fossil fuel pollution? How much will household electricity prices go up? These questions have answers, but in many cases, the details of new data centers are blocked from public view."
"Building fossil-fuel infrastructure to power data centers is a poor bet. Renewables are by far the cheaper, faster choice."
"Linn County has adopted some of the nation’s strictest data center zoning rules. Residents say the protections aren’t enough."
