Environmental Protection Network: ex-EPA officials find 30 federal actions since January 2025 that they say exacerbate health risks from data center pollution
The Trump administration is sacrificing Americans' health to build data centers, former EPA officials warn.
The VergeJustine Calma
Context & Ripple Effects
The former officials’ assessment lands after air-permit documents tied gas projects at 11 data-center campuses to more than 129 million tons of annual greenhouse-gas emissions, making the electricity supply behind compute a central environmental issue rather than a background cost. Those permit-linked projects gave advocates a concrete basis to connect data-center expansion with power-plant impacts.
The EPA had already proposed removing federal requirements that states publicize and take comment on air-pollution permit applications, while towns had mounted growing opposition to data-center proposals over water and electricity use. The new tally frames federal policy choices as part of the same permitting and community-accountability dispute.
First-order effects
Former EPA officials’ tally concentrates public-health scrutiny on the EPA and the federal actions they identify, linking data-center buildouts to the pollution from their associated power supply.
Data-center developers and gas-power suppliers face a more explicit challenge from communities and advocates: justify project impacts alongside the compute capacity they enable.
Second-order effects
If the EPA finalizes its proposed rollback of public notice and comment requirements, state permitting processes would offer affected communities fewer federally required opportunities to contest air-pollution permits tied to data-center power projects.
Local officials weighing data-center proposals gain another basis to demand disclosure on electricity and pollution impacts, adding permitting friction to the competition for energized sites.
Third-order effects
The dispute signals that power availability for AI infrastructure is becoming a health and permitting constraint as well as a capacity constraint, particularly where new gas generation is paired with campuses.
A federal approach that eases permitting participation while communities press for more oversight would shift more of the infrastructure conflict to state and local decision-makers.
The trend: AI infrastructure is turning power-plant permitting and local environmental accountability into core determinants of where additional compute capacity can be built.
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