The Trump administration spent Tuesday clearing environmental law out of the way of the tech boom. It did so twice, on two fronts, with the same justification.
The first move exempts data centres from the rules meant to stop acid rain. The second frees rocket launches from federal environmental review. Together they show how far the government will bend its own rulebook to speed up the physical infrastructure behind AI and space.
Data centres, off the acid-rain books
The Environmental Protection Agency has pulled data-centre power plants out of the Clean Air Act’s Acid Rain Program, Engadget reported, citing Reuters. The exemption covers “islanded” plants that feed a data centre rather than the public grid.
Freed from the programme, they no longer have to cut emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the gases behind acid rain. Nearly 60 such plants are already running or being built, most of them fast-tracked.
