After heaps of criticism, SpaceX said it’ll remove the dozens of fumes-belching gas turbines it’s using to power its gargantuan data centers near Memphis, Tennessee — which it’s been using without a permit — a year from now.
In an update on its website spotted by TechCrunch, the Elon Musk-owned company laid out its plan to hook up the sprawling AI facilities, some of the largest in the world, to a 1.2 gigawatt nantural gas power plant.
Credit where credit’s due: it’s an improvement over the dismal status quo. But it’ll take a while, and in the meantime the company plans to continue to use its preponderance of 69 portable gas turbines that were trucked in to sustain its data centers. It won’t fully remove them until July 2027, a full year from now.
“We care deeply about being good neighbors and we regularly reconfigure power operations to reduce noise from the facility and minimize our impact on the local Southaven community,” the company said.
