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> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and

> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, the largest estimate for any single facility ever. 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' 'Minor source.' I give you double-speak, gentlefolks of HN. Name it something - anything - and you frame it in those terms forever. It will take significant work to not refer to these as 'minor sources' when debating if they are a minor source.

internet_points 1mo ago
https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vantage-Data-Center-Report-2.pdf https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... the report > Based on Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) air permit No. 74242, the facility is authorized to operate eight natural-gas simple-cycle turbines and more than fifty diesel generators, including emergency and black-start units
- consp 1mo ago
  So it is a low efficiency power station with some servers attached to it.
  - consensus1 1mo ago
    People complain when you hook them up to the high efficiency generators that power the grid, so this is what they get.
    - pjc50 1mo ago
      People complain when you violate the rules and externalize harms, yes. They should be made to turn off the generators and pay enough for the electricity so as not to impact everyone else's prices.
    - AnneTrotter 1mo ago
      Gee, I wonder why people were complaining about that?
    - preg_match 1mo ago
      It's very simple: just take some of the existing capital and invest it towards the grid, then build the datacenter. The problem with the grid isn't electricity stealing. It's that the grid literally cannot support the amount of datacenters being built. It's not a matter of opinion, just numbers. So why won't AI companies do just that, invest in the grid? Well they want the datacenters now, not 10 years from now. I think they're all terrified investor capital will dry up at any moment, so they have to expend as much capital as possible, as fast as possible. That's stupid of course, but that's how they operate.
      - consensus1 1mo ago
        That's how it works already. You pay the power company and that money is invested into the grid. Somehow this has worked in Ashburn VA for their massive data center build out so I don't see why it can't work in other places too. Obviously nobody wants to wait 10 years and it has nothing to do with stupidity or fear.
        preg_match 1mo ago
        Okay that’s very obviously not the same thing I’m proposing, and you know that. Paying for electricity is normal. But that doesn’t magically increase the capacity. It does, in time. A lot of time. Which is why we’re using diesel generators and not building data centers. We don’t have the power, we just don’t.
        consensus1 1mo ago
        I am well aware that's not what you are proposing. What you are proposing includes "wait 10 years" which absolutely no reasonable person is going to accept.
        preg_match 1mo ago
        Well that's actually the same thing as you're proposing. And "no reasonable person is going to accept" okay... sometimes you have to accept reality. I don't know what to tell you, or venture capitalists. We don't have the power, and we won't for a while. Using polluting dirty fossil fuel generators is not a solution, and plainly should not be allowed. Of course the current US administration is incredibly pro-pollution, so they don't care. But we should. It's you and I who will be consuming these pollutants and its you and I's health on the line. Donald Trump will be dead any day now, of course he doesn't care.
- mrlonglong 1mo ago
  Good luck with that. Order books for gas turbines are full for decades. Diesels will probably get used and pollute everything with their stink and noise.
docdeek 1mo ago
FTA: 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' From the researcher: 'We estimated between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution — among the largest health-damage estimates produced for a single facility to date.' [0] Still enormous, but there is a significant difference between being 'THE X of all time, and being 'among the X of all time'. Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue. [0]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health-economic-risks-from-ai-data-centers/ https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health... [1]: https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vantage-Data-Center-Report-2.pdf https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... [2]: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources-deadly-air-pollution-us https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources...
- watwut 1mo ago
  Health costs don't matter, because someone else is paying them. We handwave them with "well only 3-4 additional people die after paying that cost. The air pollution does not matter, because global warming already exists and air is already polluted. And making all that worst also does not matter, because who cares about anything but what AI companies want.
- da_chicken 1mo ago
  > Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue. I just love the irony of being absurdly callous and dismissive of human life while also getting the basic math wrong. Nevermind that the 100,000 figure is across the nation of 300 million and includes things like automotive exhaust, while the other number is likely to be borne by that one specific community. Indeed, if you look at the study[0] your article cites -- which is looking at what we should be working on reducing -- industrial deaths are under 30,000, and electrical are around 10,000. So below half of your figure. [0]: https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/7/9/639/504911/Reducing-Mortality-from-Air-Pollution-in-the https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/7/9/639/504911/Reducing-...
vintagedave 1mo ago
This is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879
j1elo 1mo ago
- 'How many fingers, Winston?'
Gormo 1mo ago
I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of articles talking about things like air pollution, but something seems a bit off, given that, to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all. The article lumps data centers in with landfills, laundromats, and steel mills. But landfills, laundromats, and steel mills all involve physical waste products that can have chemical or biological effects on the surrounding environment. What waste products do data centers output? The article talks about expanding a fossil fuel plant as the source of the pollution question in the Virginia example. This seems only tangentially related to data centers, which don't care what specific technologies are used to generate fungible electricity. Are these disingenuous attempts to attribute pollution originating from power plants to one specific, cherry-picked application of electrical power (despite the increasing prevalence of clean generation technologies over polluting ones, and despite lots of other, unrelated drivers of increased demand for electrical power)? Or is there something more to these arguments that I'm missing?
- Tyr42 1mo ago
  Behind the meter power generation is being included on site with the data centers.
- AnneTrotter 1mo ago
  The data centers described incorporate dedicated power generation into their design. The power generation is fossil fuel based and high-pollution, and is being deployed at scale.
- tosapple 1mo ago
  [dead]
- pjc50 1mo ago
  The specific issue is that because it's a data center, from a company with unlimited money and therefore political power, it's being allowed to skip all the rules about clean generation. The ones in question are building on-side dirty power.
  - pixl97 1mo ago
JohnTHaller 1mo ago
Most of this administration contradicts themselves within a few minutes within a single speech, so this isn't unexpected.

internet_points 1mo ago

https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vantage-Data-Center-Report-2.pdf https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... the report > Based on Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) air permit No. 74242, the facility is authorized to operate eight natural-gas simple-cycle turbines and more than fifty diesel generators, including emergency and black-start units

consp 1mo ago
So it is a low efficiency power station with some servers attached to it.
- consensus1 1mo ago
  People complain when you hook them up to the high efficiency generators that power the grid, so this is what they get.
  - pjc50 1mo ago
    People complain when you violate the rules and externalize harms, yes. They should be made to turn off the generators and pay enough for the electricity so as not to impact everyone else's prices.
  - AnneTrotter 1mo ago
    Gee, I wonder why people were complaining about that?
  - preg_match 1mo ago
    It's very simple: just take some of the existing capital and invest it towards the grid, then build the datacenter. The problem with the grid isn't electricity stealing. It's that the grid literally cannot support the amount of datacenters being built. It's not a matter of opinion, just numbers. So why won't AI companies do just that, invest in the grid? Well they want the datacenters now, not 10 years from now. I think they're all terrified investor capital will dry up at any moment, so they have to expend as much capital as possible, as fast as possible. That's stupid of course, but that's how they operate.
    - consensus1 1mo ago
      That's how it works already. You pay the power company and that money is invested into the grid. Somehow this has worked in Ashburn VA for their massive data center build out so I don't see why it can't work in other places too. Obviously nobody wants to wait 10 years and it has nothing to do with stupidity or fear.
      - preg_match 1mo ago
        Okay that’s very obviously not the same thing I’m proposing, and you know that. Paying for electricity is normal. But that doesn’t magically increase the capacity. It does, in time. A lot of time. Which is why we’re using diesel generators and not building data centers. We don’t have the power, we just don’t.
        consensus1 1mo ago
        I am well aware that's not what you are proposing. What you are proposing includes "wait 10 years" which absolutely no reasonable person is going to accept.
        preg_match 1mo ago
        Well that's actually the same thing as you're proposing. And "no reasonable person is going to accept" okay... sometimes you have to accept reality. I don't know what to tell you, or venture capitalists. We don't have the power, and we won't for a while. Using polluting dirty fossil fuel generators is not a solution, and plainly should not be allowed. Of course the current US administration is incredibly pro-pollution, so they don't care. But we should. It's you and I who will be consuming these pollutants and its you and I's health on the line. Donald Trump will be dead any day now, of course he doesn't care.
mrlonglong 1mo ago
Good luck with that. Order books for gas turbines are full for decades. Diesels will probably get used and pollute everything with their stink and noise.

docdeek 1mo ago

FTA: 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' From the researcher: 'We estimated between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution — among the largest health-damage estimates produced for a single facility to date.' [0] Still enormous, but there is a significant difference between being 'THE X of all time, and being 'among the X of all time'. Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue. [0]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health-economic-risks-from-ai-data-centers/ https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health... [1]: https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vantage-Data-Center-Report-2.pdf https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... [2]: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources-deadly-air-pollution-us https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources...

watwut 1mo ago
Health costs don't matter, because someone else is paying them. We handwave them with "well only 3-4 additional people die after paying that cost. The air pollution does not matter, because global warming already exists and air is already polluted. And making all that worst also does not matter, because who cares about anything but what AI companies want.
da_chicken 1mo ago
> Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue. I just love the irony of being absurdly callous and dismissive of human life while also getting the basic math wrong. Nevermind that the 100,000 figure is across the nation of 300 million and includes things like automotive exhaust, while the other number is likely to be borne by that one specific community. Indeed, if you look at the study[0] your article cites -- which is looking at what we should be working on reducing -- industrial deaths are under 30,000, and electrical are around 10,000. So below half of your figure. [0]: https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/7/9/639/504911/Reducing-Mortality-from-Air-Pollution-in-the https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/7/9/639/504911/Reducing-...

vintagedave 1mo ago

This is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879

j1elo 1mo ago

- 'How many fingers, Winston?'

Gormo 1mo ago

I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of articles talking about things like air pollution, but something seems a bit off, given that, to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all. The article lumps data centers in with landfills, laundromats, and steel mills. But landfills, laundromats, and steel mills all involve physical waste products that can have chemical or biological effects on the surrounding environment. What waste products do data centers output? The article talks about expanding a fossil fuel plant as the source of the pollution question in the Virginia example. This seems only tangentially related to data centers, which don't care what specific technologies are used to generate fungible electricity. Are these disingenuous attempts to attribute pollution originating from power plants to one specific, cherry-picked application of electrical power (despite the increasing prevalence of clean generation technologies over polluting ones, and despite lots of other, unrelated drivers of increased demand for electrical power)? Or is there something more to these arguments that I'm missing?

Tyr42 1mo ago
Behind the meter power generation is being included on site with the data centers.
AnneTrotter 1mo ago
The data centers described incorporate dedicated power generation into their design. The power generation is fossil fuel based and high-pollution, and is being deployed at scale.
tosapple 1mo ago
[dead]
pjc50 1mo ago
The specific issue is that because it's a data center, from a company with unlimited money and therefore political power, it's being allowed to skip all the rules about clean generation. The ones in question are building on-side dirty power.
- pixl97 1mo ago

JohnTHaller 1mo ago

Most of this administration contradicts themselves within a few minutes within a single speech, so this isn't unexpected.