The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rebuffed calls to set nationwide environmental requirements or recommendations for the data center market.
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said that the onus should be on states and local communities to set guidelines, as they know what works best for them, according to reporting from Politico.
“Ten times out of 10, I’m not going to sit inside of an agency building in Washington, D.C., and that we say that we know that local community in Georgia or Florida or Arizona or elsewhere, better than everyone there locally,” Zeldin said.
Data centers have seen growing local opposition across the US in recent years, due to the perceived and real-world impacts the facilities have had on the local environment. The most notable case has been in Memphis, where Elon Musk’s xAI has faced lawsuits due to the installation of methane natural gas turbines at its Colossus data centers in the city. Water use has also become a major concern, especially in more arid regions.
