Going off-grid gives many tech firms a way to directly power data centers, but it has also come to mean less scrutiny and more pollution. In 2025 and into 2026, public opposition to data centers in the U.S. culminated in a shift in many tech companies’ data center strategy. Data center developers began looking at behind-the-meter options to meet their power needs and their rapid time scales. But the shift to installing on-site power generation has come with additional concerns for nearby residents and the planet: more emissions from fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are a direct threat to human health – the impacts begin early and accumulate over time, especially with greater exposure. Adverse effects of exposure to fossil fuel pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) can begin in utero, and children are especially vulnerable.
This shift came after months of local communities calling out tech firms for so aggressively contracting grid power for the rapid build-out of data centers that it disrupted grid planning, exploded power demand, and required significant investments from utility companies which trickled down to ratepayers. Tech companies decided that sparing ratepayers the costs of grid-based power was important, but protecting them from emissions and pollution from fossil fuels was not.
Off the grid, off the hook
In March, President Trump responded to the industry’s pleas for help in the face of fierce local resistance by proposing a voluntary “ratepayer protection pledge”, saying “[the tech firms] need some P.R. help”. Tech companies also responded to community concerns about rising electric utility bills and other concerns with their own half-measures; for example, Microsoft came out with its “Community-First AI” strategy and Anthropic released a statement, both of which promised to protect ratepayers and cover energy costs and investments. What wasn’t communicated was the back door that most companies intended to use: behind-the-meter power.
Behind-the-meter power systems (also known as on-site or off-grid power) allow data centers to access energy directly, instead of receiving electricity from a grid. This can look like a local array of solar panels, methane gas turbines, or yet-to-be-seen small modular nuclear reactors generating power directly for use.
According to research by Cleanview, in 2025 over 30% of proposed data centers were planning to bypass the grid, but 90% of all data center projects using behind-the-meter power were announced in that year. Tech companies’ need for fast power access combined with community opposition and grid concerns have made behind-the-meter power mainstream to get online.
This strategy does attempt to fulfill the promise of protecting ratepayers from the cost burden of the data center boom – financially. What it doesn’t insulate communities from is the climate and health impacts that come with the energy expansion that is even less regulated than grid-based power might be.
Polluting communities to power AI
Global Energy Monitor estimates that in 2025 the U.S. was a global leader in new gas-fired power generation – over a third of these projects are for behind-the-meter power to data centers. The amount of demand by data centers for on-site gas has skyrocketed from the year before. Texas has the largest build-out, planning for more methane gas facilities than the next seven states combined by developing an additional 57.9 GW of capacity.
In 2024, the Union of Concerned Scientists analyzed the climate and health impacts of data centers under then-current conditions, before this new explosion of on-site power generators. Under 2024 policies and demand, the fossil fuel power used for data centers was expected to increase CO2 emissions by 229 million metric tons in the U.S. by 2035, a 19% percent increase. They found that harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions would also increase significantly – both compounds contribute to respiratory illness, heart attacks, and mortality.
The infamous Colossus data center complex owned by xAI in Memphis is an example of how bad on-site power can be for local residents. Currently, the site houses at least 18 methane gas turbines which are unpermitted, in a predominantly black community that has been subjected to decades of devastating air pollution and environmental injustice. The turbines reportedly release 1,200-2,000 tons of NOx a year. Groundbreaking drone footage by Floodlight showed the extent of the pollution pumping out of the turbines in defiance of clean air rules. The operation also threatens to contaminate and strain the Memphis Sand Aquifer that millions of people rely on for residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural water.
In late 2025, xAI started operating Colossus 2 with 27 unpermitted gas turbines and an air permit request to add 41 more turbines. Despite the massive risks to locals and reports revealing the pollution at Colossus 1, the state approved the permits on March 10, 2026. Southern Environmental Law Center finds the new operation will release massive amounts of NOx, formaldehyde, and almost 20 tons of PM2.5 per year. The analysis estimated the pollution will cause $30-$44 million in health damages every year.
The new Vantage data center in Data Center Alley, Virginia also skirted the grid following intense demand and wait times from Dominion Energy. Vantage will cost as much as $99 million per year in health-related damages as a result of an estimated 3.4 to 6.5 additional premature deaths per year and the respiratory and cardiovascular disease caused by the data center’s pollution. The off-grid power system runs on 8 gas turbines and 51 diesel generators.
Another huge project posed to ramp up emissions and risk is in Amarillo, Texas, near the Pantex nuclear weapons plant. Project Matador, led by Fermi America and former Texas governor Rick Perry, has initiated plans for 5100 MW of methane gas electric generating capacity on site – nearly half of the massive data center complex’s total of 11 GW. The gas burning would release an estimated 23.5 million tons of CO2e, 1,591 tons of NOx, 283 tons of SO2, and almost 1,000 tons of PM2.5 per year.
Even Google and Microsoft, two purported climate leaders in the tech world, have revealed through their actions that at the end of the day, sustainability and public health are always second to profits. Google is partnering with Crusoe Energy to build on-site methane gas for a Texas data center. The 933 MW project would emit up to 4.5 million tons of CO2 per year. Microsoft also partnered with Crusoe on a 900 MW data center project in Abilene, Texas that’s expected to grow to 2.1 GW that will feature methane gas turbines.
Microsoft and Chevron announced a deal for 2.5 GW (and up to 5 GW) of methane gas for a data center in Pecos, Texas. A 1.35 GW Microsoft data center in West Virginia will also be powered by off-grid methane gas, using an estimated 81.25 trillion Btu of methane gas every year. The project is expected to grow to 8 GW by 2031, at which point it would release an estimated 25.55 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
This significant air pollution and associated health costs will be borne by the communities living nearby. Groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are now suing xAI for Clean Air Act violations. Local resident Krystal Polk told Floodlight, the investigative organization that revealed the damning pollution at Colossus 2, that residents like her “are a casualty of the whole data center race”.
The build-out has become so frenzied that developers will use “anything they can get their hands on”, even gas generators strapped to semitrucks and turbines from old aircraft and warships, according to an analysis from Cleanview. While many tech companies turn to on-site power options, others are pressuring utilities to keep dangerous coal plants open and entrench communities in even more fossil fuels. Globally, research has shown 1 in 5 deaths can be linked to the air pollution from burning fossil fuels. Off-grid power projects are the newest way that data center giants are obfuscating their unjust, profit-driven behavior.
Promises to protect ratepayers and take ownership of the financial impacts of grid expansion and power demand offered up by tech companies have failed to truly take communities’ health and safety to heart. Data centers will never be a public good until tech companies take public health and climate impacts seriously in how they operate and deploy AI. The problem of data centers was never only about ratepayer impacts – it’s a symptom of a larger issue of unrestrained corporate power overriding public interest and justice.
