The biggest scandal in AI energy usage right now deserves to be the xAI data center running on 35 methane gas turbines that don't need air permits because they are "temporary" and don't have catalytic reduction pollution controls installed because... they just didn't bother?
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/12/xai-data-center/

@simon Obviously Musk is at fault here, but allowing companies to run "temporary" gas turbine generators for up to a year without permits or requiring them to have air pollution controls is quite a long period of time. Sure it may be necessary to run such generators for short periods of time for testing or actual temporary use, but beyond that I don't see why they don't require permits in this case even after at least most the generators on-site are found to not just be in-use "temporarily".